


Light from the Shadows

by Gemma_Inkyboots, raisedbymoogles



Series: Renewed [2]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Afterlife, Gen, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Possession, Post-Movie, Reunions, Sunset House, awkward reveals, jazz goodies are best goodies, post-war life, privacy ethics involving dead people, prowl explains the afterlife, robot sex - spark play, starscream is not sneaky, starscream knock it off, starscream thinks he's sneaky, wandering sparks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 06:18:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3639966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gemma_Inkyboots/pseuds/Gemma_Inkyboots, https://archiveofourown.org/users/raisedbymoogles/pseuds/raisedbymoogles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prowl wasn't dead, to begin with.</p><p>Well. He was certainly fatally shot, but he wasn't DEAD-dead. Jazz knew this, fortunately, so all he had to do was keep himself busy until his partner returned. So he thinks to himself, 'self,' he thinks, 'why not open a goodie shop?'</p><p>Starscream was very dead, to begin with. And HE WAS NOT HAPPY.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Co-written with Gemma Inkyboots. (EDIT: Successfully dragged her onto AO3! Yay! :DDDD) Warnings for fluff, smut, feels, and a few more U's than there needs to be.
> 
> This fic expands on the ending of 'Those Who Wander', and takes place in the gap between the ending of the final chapter and its epilogue.

In the months after Unicron, rebuilding had taken priority over warfare. While the threat of the Decepticons hadn’t vanished entirely, what remained of their army had retreated fervently enough that the Autobots had tentatively begun to expand out of their captured base complex and start work. The Neutrals of Cybertron had been called a hidden faction during the war - now that the shooting had stopped, they peered suspiciously out of their shelters and scrutinised the new faction claiming Cybertron as their own. It had only been thanks to Rodimus Prime’s earnest attempts at diplomacy that they hadn’t just retreated again and ignored the Autobots as they had the Decepticons, and then nothing would have come of the attempts to rebuild. Much as the prouder Autobots insisted that they could have made it alone, the more sensible ones shook them silly and reminded them that the Autobots might have an alliance with Earth and all that renewable energy, but the Neutrals knew more about Cybertron as it was now than the ‘Bots could manage alone, even if they _had_ been able to manage a thorough structural analysis unequipped and unsupported.

As it was, enough Autobots had been civilians before the war had broken out - and enough Neutrals had had to take up arms against any factionmech who threatened what little they had managed to scrape together - that a sort of common ground had been found. While no Neutral would agree to wear an Autobot symbol, and while the remaining Autobots wore theirs with pride, enough work got done that sheer physical labour and logistics ground down the barriers between Autobot and Neutral better than anything else could have done.

Creativity became the order of the cycle. Much like the human phrase ‘beating swords into ploughshares’, formerly-military facilities became hospitals and weapons manufacturing plants were refurbished to manufacture needed supplies. Communities of squatters who’d taken shelter in Iacon’s abandoned buildings adamantly refused to be moved, and Rodimus responded by declaring them residential buildings and ceding them to the squatters’ ownership, making them no longer squatters but property owners.

And in downtown Iacon, Jazz stood before a small building that had once been a drone depot, said “Yeah, this’ll do,” and strode inside to make it into the best little gourmet goodie shop Cybertron had ever seen.

*

“Wow, Jazz. You’ve really done a good job with this place.”

“Why, thanks, lil Bee.” Jazz leaned his elbow on the counter, grinning. “See anything you fancy?”

Bumblebee peered over the colorful assortment of goodies laid out behind the glass. “There’s so many,” he marveled. “Did you make all these yourself? ...are those galaxy spirals?” Jazz laughed and plucked one of his coveted specialty goodies out of the case, handing it over to his former subordinate. “Mmm,” he sighed as he took a bite, “brings back memories.”

“For me too.” Jazz smiled, his visor dark and faraway. “But I wanna make new memories now. Peace-time memories, for everybody.”

“You will,” Bumblebee assured him, reaching up the counter. Jazz offered his hand in turn, letting Bumblebee clasp it. “Oh, how much do I owe you?”

“Aww, ‘Bee. I could never charge you.”

“You’re never gonna make a living that way,” Bumblebee warned him through another mouthful of his spiral. “Everyone’s gonna come in to see you now you’re staying in one place, you know. If you don’t charge any of us, you’ll wind up giving all your goodies away!”

Jazz only grinned. “What do you think part of the appeal was? Y’know me, lil Bee - always gotta hear all the gossip.”

“Well, sure, but - just promise me you’ll put out a tip jar and actually charge the younglings. I mean it. ...for one thing, we never really got to teach them much about buying things.”

“Are you kiddin’ me? Have you _seen_ the Aerials’ Kre-on collection?”

“I don’t mean on eBay, Jazz,” Bumblebee snorted. “And for the record, _everyone_ has seen their Kre-ons after you put them all over the Ark in compromising positions. But my point is you will actually need to make credits on this, remember?”

Waving away the other ‘Bot’s concerns, Jazz only grinned at him. “Ahh, I know. Don’t you worry, lil ‘Bee, I’m on this.”

And he was, that was the strange thing; after bagging up a healthy order of spiral galaxies and waving Bumblebee goodbye, Jazz surveyed his kingdom and decided to make the most of the lull. He had enough supplies to make up a new batch of spirals without having to go out again, and given that they were his best-seller, Jazz set to while things were quiet. 

It wasn’t that he’d never owned a business before. Long enough ago that the current Prime hadn’t been so much as a flicker through his carrier’s spark, Jazz had been the proud proprietor of the best club in Polyhex - an eclectic bunch of dancers, professional to amateur and all exceptional, and his own band jumping up on the stage whenever they could get together. It had been his pride and joy, but after the war - and despite some otherworldly encouragement on a memorable Trek of the Awoken on Earth - Jazz hadn’t chosen to re-open or reinvent his old club, however much he had loved it. His spark wouldn’t have been in it.

“Maybe I just needed ta keep my hands busy this time ‘round,” he murmured to himself, digging out an awkwardly-balanced package of additives. “An’ who don’t wanna walk by an’ come check out the goodies? Nobody, that’s who.”

Hefting the parcel down onto his workstation - small so far, but Jazz preferred it chaotic and cosy for more reasons than one - he set about shaking in a cocktail of blends, without once referring to any measurements. Jazz didn’t write down his recipes, and he never left his ingredients in the same place twice; less because he worried about anyone having the bright idea of trying to filch them, and more because after millennia of working the foulest jobs that Spec Ops had to offer, caution was ground into his spark. His gear was balanced oddly all over the walls so no-one could slip in unannounced without sharp audials catching the slide of metal on mixing bowl; there was an obnoxiously loud ringer on the door of the shop that clanged like an Earthen shop bell in _As the Kitchen Sinks_. It would be a long, long time before _those_ habits faded away.

And yet, despite his precautions, Jazz gradually had the feeling creep down his backstrut that he wasn’t alone anymore. His instincts having kept him alive so far, Jazz hummed cheerily to himself and rattled his utensils as he reached for the heavy baton jumbled in with the rolling pins; he could be wrong, but better wrong than dead. Still...he didn’t feel threatened. Wary, yes, but - more like Bumblebee was padding up behind him on a mission than the impression of an incoming Decepticon spy.

Something glimmered in the corner of his visor; Jazz shifted his weight from pede to pede, still humming, and turned with the bowl of spiral mix in one arm and baton in his hand.

Prowl looked him over and gave him a sad, longing smile - one that flashed into pure shock as the mixing bowl went crash-spattering to the floor.

“Jazz?” he blurted, optics round - round and white and opaque, his colours faint as spilt watercolours in the rain, and Jazz _did not care_ how it had happened, he wasn’t waiting another four years for the next Trek when Prowl was right there _now._

“Prowler!” Jazz cried, and did his level best to wrap his whole frame around the shade of his partner.

“Jazz,” Prowl sputtered, trying to wrap his arms around Jazz in turn. “How can you see me?”

“Dunno. Dun care.” Jazz pulled back to beam helplessly at his partner, hands on his shoulders - not the firmest of grips, but ‘Jazz’ and ‘letting go’ had never been spoken in the same breath. “Slag me, partner, I thought I’d have t’ wait until th’ next Trek to see you.”

“I thought the same.” Prowl reached up _through_ Jazz’s arm to stroke his cheek. “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I had to guide Ironhide and the others to the Well - no easy task with Unicron having twisted the pathways-” He saw Jazz wince. “And in any case, I thought - I thought I’d just be haunting you, unseen, until the Veil thinned again.” His face creased at the thought, pained. “I thought I would be doing nothing but watch as you grieved.”

Jazz smiled determinedly - the only thing he could do, given the depth of his feelings. “As if any Veil could keep me from you. You’re the better half of my spark, remember?”

“Equal halves,” Prowl answered automatically, and paused. “...you did that on purpose.”

“No shame, lover.”

“‘Shame’ was never part of the agreement,” Prowl confirmed, voice dry, then broke into a glowing, contented smile like he really couldn’t help himself. “It’s so good to see you,” he said, softer, and Jazz tilted his helm into the insubstantial stroking, visor dimming in bliss.

“Never stopped thinkin’ about you, babe,” he hummed. 

Prowl’s hands faltered briefly, then his arms wrapped around Jazz’s frame as tightly as he could manage - Jazz let out a startled noise that he would never, ever classify as a squeak, feeling Prowl’s bumper tingle smoothly _through_ his plating and deep into his own.

“...this’s new, though,” he managed, and Prowl would have jumped away if not for Jazz’s determined clinging. He still arched his back as though trying to spare Jazz contact with his frame, and Jazz was having none of it.

“I’m sorry, love, I’ve managed until now but I forgot-”

“...that you give me tingles?” Jazz broke in, giving Prowl his best cheeky grin. “Jeez, babe, seems I gotta do better if y’forgot _that._ "

This was familiar, this was what Jazz had missed so desperately, and at Prowl’s exasperated, anxious huff Jazz could almost believe Optimus would be chuckling behind them any minute.

“That is _not_ what I meant,” Prowl informed him, almost stern but for the near-visible aura of warky mama bird. ...although now Jazz came to think of it...

“Yeah, I know,” he said a little more gently. “Seriously, babe, y’ain’t hurting me. Not even close. But, uh, didja bring th’ lights up on purpose? You’re glowing.”

Prowl really did phase backwards through Jazz’s arms at that, and this time Jazz didn’t struggle. The faint halo of light around him was as faint as Prowl himself to Jazz’s optics, but it was definitely there - dim and watery, but hazing out around Prowl’s frame like his energy field made visible.

“Dd it do that on th’Treks an’ I just couldn’t see?” Jazz asked softly, reaching out to brush his fingertips through the echoing light. Prowl shook his head, shivering slightly when Jazz’s touch brushed through the whatever-it-was.

“No - no, not even when I was first made a psychopomp. I can create light as a beacon, but that isn’t light for its own sake - it is as much a comm-call or a - a scent trail as _light,_ strictly speaking. ...it’s hard to describe. I’m not sure how you’re seeing me at all but _that is very distracting._ "

“Oops,” said Jazz, clearly not sorry at all, given he didn’t stop running his fingers through the glow of Prowl’s aura. He couldn’t feel it, only the faint tingle of Prowl’s presence, but he could see it playing around his fingers, rippling faintly gold over the dark plating. “Say, babe, I’m just throwin’ things out and seein’ what sticks - you know I ain’t too up on the, uh, nuts an’ bolts of what you do - maybe Unicron’s remains bein’ so close got somethin’ to do with this? You know, like how Frodo’s sword glows when there’s orcs in th’ bushes.”

“ _Jazz._ " Prowl huffed fondly. “That is adorable, but I am not a magic sword. Besides, Unicron is no longer an issue. When his body was destroyed, Primus took his consciousness - I hesitate to call it a spark - into the Well with him. The two of them are respectively either sound asleep or gone now, and will remain that way for a very long time indeed.”

Jazz rocked back faintly. “Unicron’s in the Well? Not the Pit?”

“The Pit is a confused metaphor, Jazz, not reality. There is the Well and only the Well, though your perception of it in a mortal frame would differ as greatly from mine as I am now, as mine would from Primus’. Besides, Primus was the only one who would have been able to stop Unicron from returning eventually. They are spark twins, in a sense.”

“Huh. No slag.” Jazz frowned. “Dunno if the theological implications are gonna go over well, but this is why I’m a skeptic. Not gonna be pleased when I get there and have t’ share space with him after what me an’ Bee an’ Spike went through, though.”

That ‘warky mama bird’ aura underwent a sudden surge of growth. “...Jazz?” Prowl asked, optics narrowing. “What happened?”

Jazz gave him a sheepish shrug. “We were kinda - almost digested.”

“...you were _what._ "

“We’re fine, honest, we got out no problem thanks t’Danny an’ Roddy - you know about Roddy, right-?”

Prowl’s optics were blazing, _literally_ flaring up; trickles of white lightning flashed and curled from his optics as the glow around him deepened. “Do _not_ try to derail this, Jazz.”

“...uh. Right.” Shoulders rising almost to his audials - something he’d only ever shown to Prowl or Optimus when he really did mean it, and that made his spark wobble all over again - he reluctantly told the whole story, voice getting quieter and lower by the word. Prowl’s arms wrapped around him again, and Jazz fumbled out the last few words with his lips brushing through misty plating.

Prowl was silent for a long moment, holding Jazz fierce and close and the other mech revelled in it; for all that Prowl’s embrace was as substantial as the mist that drifted in on the Trek of the Homeless, it meant safety and welcome to Jazz and always would.

“I have taken many sparks to the Well,” Prowl said, slowly and calmer now. “I never thought I would escort that of my creator, much less Unicron’s. Primus’ perception of the universe is not the same as yours or mine; He sees- ...He _saw_ . Further and deeper on more levels than I am capable of, and yet in the Well...the spark of a cassetticon has as much power and will as a cityformer. Primus is light and life and will, but He was so tired and in so much pain...”

Prowl’s voice wobbled much as Jazz’s had, and Jazz nuzzled his bumper in wordless support. That earned him a crooked smile as Prowl gathered his words again.

“He needed to rest, and will now for a very long time, but we may well see His spark again. Unicron, on the other hand - I saw it myself. His spark burst into the Well in a rage, but for all his size and power all he could or would do was lash out. He spent all of his energy trying to bring everything down on his own head, and he simply...” Prowl fluttered his fingers, faint sparkles trailing after his hands, and Jazz suddenly remembered fireworks on Earth - all that energy and fire, gone to nothing in one great colourful kaboom.

“Woah,” he breathed softly, and gave Prowl a shaky sort of grin. “Don’t suppose ol’Megs went the same way?”

Prowl shook his head. “Megatron’s situation is more complicated by far, and I’ve yet to untangle _that_ one. ...and yes, since you asked, I do know about Roddy. I only wish he’d had more time.”

“I know what you mean,” Jazz admitted, smiling faintly. “Still, he’s stepped up amazingly for someone learnin’ officer training on the fly. With him at the helm, Cybertron’s actually got a shot at a future again.” He grinned, spreading his arms to take in his Best Little Goodie Shop Ever. “Case in point - whatcha think?”

Prowl laughed, making a show of examining every corner of the small shop. “It’s lovely,” he said, and Jazz glowed almost as much as Prowl was. “I love the Earthen touches in the decor. I’m sure you’ll be the most popular shop in Iacon.”

“Heh, hope so. I’ve only just opened - so far I’ve had a grand total of one customer, an’ that was ‘Bee.” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Lil slagger insisted on paying for his order, too.”

“Of course he did. You can’t run a business by giving away your stock, you know.” Prowl tapped his nose reprovingly, and Jazz spluttered and shook his head at the sudden burst of tingles. Prowl withdrew guiltily until Jazz laughed.

“He said the same thing. Listen, I have run a business before, I know what I’m doin’. A ‘Con walks through that door, he’s gettin’ taken for every credit he’s got, an’ I’ll do it with a smile on my faceplates. So it all evens out.”

“I suppose it does,” Prowl murmured, watching Jazz with a fondness he’d only let out in the privacy of their own berth, safe away from the world. “There are a lot of things evening out, now.”

“...say whatnow?”

Doorwings fluttered gently, more obvious now that, presumably, Prowl didn’t have to play the officer. “Mostly the rebuilding. It’s not only Neutrals coming out of hiding, I’ve noticed. You likely will have Decepticons coming in to buy goodies, and isn’t that something neither of us would have imagined before?”

“I guess so,” Jazz said softly. “Just wish it hadn’t happened like this.”

Prowl was beside him only a moment later, and Jazz leaned into his insubstantial embrace.

*

Jazz’s second customers ever strolled through the door the next on-cycle, breaking the monotony of four hours of quiet with the ding of a bell. “Oh my,” Jazz heard a familiar voice say, “the door makes noise. How strange.”

“Hello, be with ya in a klick,” Jazz called, casting about for his towel. Prowl pointed him to the basin he’d tossed it at, smiling tolerantly, and Jazz gave him a grateful, sheepish grin as he grabbed it and wiped the coloring powder from his hands. “Sorry for the delay, gentlemechs,” he caroled, strolling out into the storefront, “what can I - Polaris!”

A tiny aquatic model with a raised star on one hip bounced on his pedes, nearly incandescent with delight. “Jazz! Oh, I’d heard it was you, I’m so glad to see you again!” He turned to his companion. “Tauri, I don’t think you ever met Jazz - he used to run a club too-”

“-and he got your career started, I’ve heard the story, Tugs.” Tauri, a bright red shuttle-alt with a star of his own, chuckled. “Hey, there, I’m Centauri. Pol told me you were a hot hand with gelled energon back in the day, he didn’t tell me you were hot, full stop.”

Jazz laughed. “Flirtin’ already! Oh, I like you.”

“Perk of the job~” the shuttle caroled, and laughed outright when Pol simply couldn’t contain himself any longer, throwing himself into Jazz’s arms for an enthusiastic squidge. “Awww, ain’t that adorable.”

“Be nice, Tauri,” Polaris hummed, snuggling around Jazz’s bumper as his propellers fluttered in their mounts. 

“When am I not nice? I can be nice- Ooooh, iron crunchies! I can be _very_ nice; scratch that, I can be downright well-behaved...”

As Tauri wandered off along the counter making happy little noises, Pol nuzzled Jazz’s bumper and peered up at him, gold optics fond.

“You look happy,” he said softly, and Jazz hugged him tighter just because. (Partly because Pol always made adorable little squeaky noises when he did, and this time was no exception.) “I mean it, sweetest. We hadn’t seen you at the House for such a long time, and with everything that happened - well - I worried. How are you doing, really?”

“Eh...” Jazz thought it over, absently snuggling the little aquatic close and booping one of Pol’s helmfins with his nose. “Ain’t gonna say I’ve been all right as such. I lost- people, pretty much all of my officer buddies are gone. ‘S been hard, Pol.”

Polaris crooned softly, optics all sympathy, and a delicate hand reached up to rest against Jazz’s cheek. “I’m so sorry, Jazz...if you ever want company or someone to talk to, you can always comm or come and find us. Any time, I mean it.”

“...awww, Pol.” How could Jazz not snuggle him close at that, really. “You’re a sweetspark, y’really are. ...An’, well, ‘s kinda hard not bein’ a top-rung ‘Bot anymore. ‘S easier in some ways, I get ta see more of the place now, but - y’know how it is when a buncha people’ve been your home for so long.”

“I know. I don’t know what I’d do without the other stars and La Lune.” Pol stroked his cheek gently, and Jazz gave him a crooked smile.

“Well, I got it on good authority Unicron ain’t comin’ back, an’ the only ‘Cons around here are makin’ a go of bein’ ‘honest businessmechs’.” Jazz wiggled a hand free and did some sarcastic air-quotes; Polaris looked blank at the gesture, and Jazz had to laugh. “Sorry, sorry, ‘s an Earthism. You guys gonna go for any of the media bundles they’re gonna start sending up here? ‘Cause you of all people’d love the music an’ dance. Ain’t never seen anythin’ so varied.”

“Oh, I know!” Pol lit up like a sunrise and Jazz grinned - nothing would get Polaris chattering like his favourite subjects (La Lune, dance and music, not necessarily in that order), and Pol had been hooked on Earthen music from the moment he’d heard a few bars. “I want all the music bundles I can download, and did you know they have these things called musicals-?”

“Someone wants to go on a cultural-exchange arts trip~” Tauri sing-songed from the far side of the shop, and Pol flustered.

“I’m not the only one!” he protested, Tauri smirking over one bulky shoulder guard and waggling his wings rudely. “You said yourself you wanted to study all the linguistic variations, whatever that means.”

“Oh, yeah? We got a cunning linguist on our hands?” Jazz grinned, clearly at some private joke that neither Pol nor Tauri got. “Well, I reckon I could help you out there, too. Earth’s got around six thousand, five hundred languages-” Tauri’s optics went wide - “and I’m fluent in about twenty percent of ‘em. Including six dead languages.”

“You speak over a thousand Earth languages?” Pol breathed. “Jazz, that’s - that’s _amazing._ You had to fight a war and you still found time to learn all that?”

“Well, I was a cultural ambassador of sorts.” Jazz shrugged modestly. “Nothin’ makes people warm up to you like talkin’ to ‘em in their own language, if you’re an alien.”

“Even so, that’s very impressive.”

“There’s only ever been six hundred languages on Cybertron,” Tauri put in. “And we’ve been around a lot longer. Awww, slag, now I really do wanna go to Earth. Think you could put in a good word with that hotaft Prime of yours?”

Jazz had been in the middle of pulling a few goodies out of the case to cut up for samples; he spluttered and nearly dropped them. “Tauri,” Pol scolded, but Jazz was laughing.

“Oh, I gotta introduce you to the kid, linguistics or no,” he grinned, and Pol relaxed and shook his helm indulgently as Tauri beamed. “C’mere, see what you think of these.”

“Ooooh, gimme gimme gimme!” Tauri made greedy grabbyhands at the collection of goodie bits, and for all that Pol batted at what he could reach of Tauri’s hands, he was right behind.

“These are amazing, Jazz!” he exclaimed, nibbling around the edge of something sweet and sticky rolled in delicate rust flakes. “Mmmh... I don’t suppose we could- oh. Oh! I know! Jazz, can I get five of everything you have in the shop ready to go?”

“Pol, you sneaky little hedonist!” Tauri laughed.

“No, no, I mean to show Lune and the others!” Pol whirled back to Jazz, optics bright and hopping up onto the tips of his curvy pedes. “Jazz, if I talked to Lune, would you be at all interested in supplying the House with goodies? We’re already getting more people coming in, and some days I just can’t keep up on my own-”

“...frag, Pol, you’re a genius.”

Jazz whistled softly, field flaring in open surprise. “Woah, Pol, ain’t that a bit previous without talkin’ to the boss-mech? I mean, I’d haveta do some figures first, but I ain’t gonna say no to extra business.”

“I’ve already been talking to him about hiring someone in or dropping the goodies!” Pol bubbled, hands clasping in excitement. “I don’t want to stop making them, just the opposite, everyone who comes in loves them, but with more people coming in now everything’s settling down and getting better I really haven’t got the time anymore and it wouldn’t have to be all of them, we could wrap them up nicely and put some on each table with your shop’s name on them - oh, please say you’ll think about it!”

Jazz laughed, lifting his hands. “Okay, okay, I’ll think about it, I promise! As if I could say no to you.” He pulled a couple of boxes out from under the counter as Pol bounced his delight. “I’ll count those out for you. Five of each, you said?”

“One for all the stars, and one for La Lune,” Pol nodded. “Please.”

“Comin’ right up!” Jazz chirped.

Prowl heard the happy carol from the back room where he was keeping an optic on the goodies Jazz had left on the drying rack; curious, he peered out into the storefront. Jazz was counting out what looked like a truly impressive order, chattering animatedly to his customers. _It looks as though Jazz’s business is getting off to a great start,_ he thought, smiling fondly as he watched his beloved.

A strangled squeak came from the shuttle; startled, Prowl glanced up. His gaze met the shuttle’s, whose optics were bright with fear as he stood and shook half out of his plating.

Centauri hiccuped again and fled, leaving only the bell’s cheery ding in his wake. Polaris squeaked, staring after him in alarm. “I - I’m sorry, I’ll be right back,” he blurted to Jazz, and ran out after him.

“......the frag,” Jazz said after a long moment, staring after the vanished stars, “was _that_ about.”

A tingly sensation wrapped around his middle, Prowl resting his chin on Jazz’s shoulder, and Jazz shivered at the feel of Prowl’s bumper passing through his back. “He saw me,” Prowl murmured, and Jazz could hear the bewilderment and incredulity in his voice. “Your other friend looked right through me, but the shuttle _saw_ me. That shouldn’t be possible...”

“Hate to say it, babe, but I shouldn’t be able ta see you either.” Jazz set down the half-full box with a huff of his vents, propping his hands on his hips over Prowl’s arms. To carry on filling the boxes, or not to fill the boxes...

Prowl shifted uneasily, sparking off that almost ticklish feeling wherever he touched. “No,” he admitted slowly, “but I’m beginning to come up with a theory why you can. That shuttle, though...”

“Name’s Centauri,” Jazz supplied, tilting his head to better see his partner.

“Centauri. ...there’s something very familiar about him, but I can’t quite think what.”

“Huh. ...he wasn’t around last time I went t’the House. Reckon he’s pretty new. You ever look in on th’place without me, babe?” Jazz grinned, making the attempt at teasing to keep things normal - well, almost normal - but Prowl was frowning in the abstracted sort of way that meant he was concentrating too hard to notice.

“No,” he murmured eventually. “No, I don’t think he was entirely new at all. It wasn’t his frame that felt familiar, it was his spark.”

*

“Tauri? Are you okay?”

Was he-? No. No, he was not okay. He couldn’t even see ‘okay’ from where he was. “M’ fine, Tugboat,” he mumbled, knowing exactly how unconvincing he was saying that from his wing-wrapped huddle in an alley. “I’ll catch you back at the House.”

“I’m not going back without you, sweetspark, that’s not even a question.” Pol sat down beside him, all kindness and concern, and Tauri tried not to resent him for it. “Please talk to me. You don’t have to tell me what’s wrong if you don’t want to.”

Which was kind of him, because Tauri wasn’t sure he _could._ What words were there, in any language, for thinking you’d seen the last of The People Who Weren’t Actually Fragging There, only to find one hanging out in a goodie shop and panicking in front of Pol and his friend and Primus and everybody? The humiliation was almost worse than the terror. “So that was Jazz,” he croaked, running his hand over his helm. “Glad he made it through the war and all.”

“Yes,” Pol murmured. “Me too.”

“And hey, he makes goodies.” Tauri grinned, falsely bright. “Gotta love a mech with a talent.”

“Jazz has a lot of talents. He dances and plays music too.”

“No kiddin’? Maybe we should recruit him.” No, wait, bad idea. If Jazz came to the House, that ghost might follow. Bad, bad idea.

“Mmm, I’m not sure he’d agree. But it _would_ be nice if he came to visit, or if we can persuade him to make us some goodies.” Pol leaned against him, a gentle little pressure against his armour and a field that pinged trustworthy-safe-home, and Tauri gave up on any hope of ever having dignity ever again in favour of scooping the tiny aquatic into his lap to cuddle him like a sparkling-toy. Pol let the lanky shuttle move him about without complaint, only reaching up to pat Tauri’s gauntlet when he’d settled.

“It’s all right,” Pol murmured, and Tauri thought he was going to shake right out of his plating with hysterics. “Whatever it is, dearspark, it’s going to be all right.”

It took two resets for his vocaliser to start working clearly, every system whining with stress - surely Pol could hear it, he felt ready to lift off or rattle into bits - before he could manage anything through the static. “Sure, Pol, whatever you say.” He reset his vocaliser again, and this time most of the static was gone - as embarrassing as it was, cuddling Pol really was helping his systems ramp down from absolute panic to something he could work around. “Look, Tugs, I think I’m gonna head back to the House. Seriously. But, uh, if you wanna go and get your stuff, I can wait.”

“Here?” Pol twisted around to give him an anxious look, those big gold optics searching his face, and Tauri had to avert his own gaze before he started blurting the whole thing out. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait outside the goodie shop? Jazz won’t mind.”

“No! No, I’m- I’m good. ...no offence to your friend or anything. He’s shiny. I just - need to stay out here for a while.”

Polaris’ optics swept over his face again, but Tauri stubbornly wouldn’t look at him; he’d had enough problems when he first started at the House that the last thing he wanted was another spark-to-spark, even with the sweetest non-pushy mech ever. Bad enough that sometimes he’d spook out under the stars thinking he’d lose his grip and float off the House’s roof; worse that he _still_ had nightmares of the tunnels in shared quarters where the other stars could see his fear. He really, really did not want to talk about any of this in an alley in the dark. On the other hand, all those embarrassing panic fits and involuntary, humiliating run-for-cover moments meant that Pol only watched his face for a moment, then nodded slowly.

“All right, sweetspark. Will you be okay here?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Just a stupid- thing.” Tauri gave him a weak attempt at his usual dazzling grin, but wasn’t surprised at the reproving pat to the gauntlet he got in return.

“It’s _not_ stupid if it upsets you,” Pol scolded, but he stretched as high as he could to press a kiss to Tauri’s chin as he stood. “I’ll be as quick as I can, sweetest. Comm me if you need me.”

“Sure, Tugs.” Tauri watched the other star patter off towards the main street, wrestled with his pride and embarrassment and then opened a comm. //Hey - tell Jazz no hard feelings for me?//

//Of course, love.//

*

The off-shift cycle had Prowl gazing out the window in Jazz’s new apartment. Situated as it was above the goodie shop, he had a clear view of the street and the people passing back and forth along it. As he watched, a heavy-build Neutral staggered out of the main flow of pedestrians and leaned against the nearest lamppost as if weathering a strong wind. _Drunk already?_ Prowl thought dryly.

The mech peered blearily at the storefront, then he slowly looked up. His mouth dropped open in shock. Prowl jumped, drawing back from the window; the drunk mech shook his head and staggered off, clearly swearing off the hard stuff if this was the kind of thing he saw under its influence.

Prowl glanced down at his hands. He ‘looked’ to himself much the same as he had when he was enframed, though he was fairly sure back then he hadn’t glowed faintly gold. Was this what was supposed to happen to Cybertron’s last psychopomp? Just how many people were going to be able to see him?

“Babe?” Jazz called, coming out of the washrack shining with a fresh coat of wax. “Hey, come tell me if I’ve missed any spots, huh?”

Prowl sighed, setting the puzzle aside for now. “Of course, love.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jazz meets some old friends, who present a bit of a puzzle for Prowl.

Sunset House was one of the few remaining structures to have stayed standing despite the war. Part of this was its location - very little of the House was at ground level, the entrance being a low, bunker-like structure half buried under rubble that led to a snugly secure theatre-like hall, just large enough for a scattering of furniture set up to accommodate everyone from minibots to shuttles. Its regulars loved the House for its atmosphere, the more theatrical guests clamoured after the music and dance the House offered, but more than that, the House had a reputation.

The Sunset House stars were a mismatched bunch - trained to an intimidatingly high standard by the House’s mysterious owner, they made charming conversation with their guests, sang, danced, and had their own specialities that earned them a subset of regulars each time they worked the floor. Polaris danced, Centauri sang and they all joined Pol on the stage when he needed a partner or, occasionally, a sentient and helpful climbing frame to add height to his routines, at one point or another. That was what a visitor’s cover charge paid for, as well as access to a bar - which had admittedly suffered through the war, to the point that weak midgrade was the best thing on offer for love or credits, along with the hand-made goodies Pol put together for each of the little tables scattered around the stage. But the real draw, for those who knew the House intimately, was its reputation.

La Lune hired bouncers, even made use of the House itself when the war was at its worst - especially then, the neutrals muttered amongst themselves, for the bouncers were fewer and less visible as mechs went underground before they got shot or conscripted - because the House had a reputation for strict, occasionally vicious impartiality. A factionmech could enter and get nothing more than a side-eye and perhaps a closer watch from security and the owner himself, and be more than welcome to sit a while and spend their credits. Cause trouble, however - like pick a fight with someone of the opposite faction for the sake of _having_ factions - and you would find yourself leaving the House dented and at speed. La Lune took no prisoners and had no time to suffer fools, and he protected his stars with all the jealous defensiveness of a dragon curling around its hoard. 

Each star had their own speciality, and not just on the stage - Sirius and his broad, skilled hands worked the spa, when there were enough resources to go around for an oil bath and wax, but he also arched beautifully in restraints. Try any kind of pain play without negotiation beforehand, or use any kind of unpleasant wordplay with him, on the other hand, and you’ll be out on the street before you can reel in your cables. Celesti, a charming Neutral Seeker with impeccable control over his every word and gesture, spent his time on the floor drawling sarcastic comments and flashing his sharp scarlet optics over anyone who plucked up the courage to engage him as their Dom for the night. The House’s reputation for impartiality extended to their personal services, and any client, whether experienced regular or nervous first-timer, were assured the same confidentiality, skill and - occasionally, memorably - thorough research into the requested safe-sane-and-consensual kinks. You name it, they had either done it or knew where to find out about it in time for your first session.

The House’s side rooms had been booked for everything from a tense rendezvous between opposing faction team leaders, to a deeply space-sick flier booking Pol for a night’s cuddling and reassurance. The same rules applied, whatever a client’s needs - La Lune’s set of five rules were marked out on the wall inside the entrance, in broad, thick strokes of the brightest paint they could scrounge, past the first set of blast doors and before a client could pass through the second set into the House proper.

_1\. While in the House, the stars will let you know if contact is permitted. No non-star staff are to be touched, solicited or harassed. Do not flirt with the bar staff._

_2\. Safewords are not optional, and will be discussed along with all parties’ limits before beginning play or a scene. It is impossible to embarrass a star, but it is more than possible to perk their interest._

_3\. Damage, pain play and line-fuel play are all options for clients, but are a hard no for all the stars. We have a cornerstone policy of not shaming kinks, but also one of protecting our employees._

_4\. If a client chooses to play with a star, the star/s will log this, the safewords and the room being used with Management. We do not monitor playrooms; we DO monitor our employees’ status._

_5\. This is a neutral establishment. Brawling and factionmongering will not be tolerated._

Underneath the rules, in a smaller, stricter script, was the legend:

_Management’s decision is final, and breaking the rules will lead to a warning - or straight to a ban which may or may not be lifted at their discretion. Behave._

As he passed through the first set of doors, Jazz snickered as he re-read the rather worn lettering. “Seems some things don’ change. ‘S good to see the place still goin’.”

Prowl drifted in behind him, scanning the lines of glyphs as his doorwings lifted higher and higher in incredulity. “...well. I think I see why you like the atmosphere here.”

“Yup. An’ the music. Lune don’ believe in skimpin’ on anything that does well, even if he ain’t much for it himself.” Jazz tapped on the inner door, gave the bouncer who opened it his most brilliant smile - the large mech didn’t so much as glance Prowl’s way, much to his relief - and paid the cover charge without a peep of complaint. As they passed through the doors, Prowl careful not to brush the bouncer and make her startle at nothing, the noise level rose to the point where Jazz could murmur comments quietly to Prowl without anyone around him noticing.

“See the Seeker over there?” he said softly, Prowl settling against Jazz’s shoulder and nodding as his optics were caught by bronze and cream wings. “One with th’star on his hip like th’others had? That’s ‘Lesti. Celesti, I mean. An’ the grounder over there’s Sirius - ‘s four stars now, I guess. Tauri’s new t’me. Used to come here sometimes when I needed a break from...stuff.”

“I see,” Prowl murmured back; the Seeker had turned and spotted Jazz across the room. His optics drifted over them, then snapped back alertly - Prowl was just about to backpedal or hide behind Jazz when the Seeker gracefully disengaged from the little knot of mechs around him and made his way over to them.

“Jazz, darling,” he drawled; Prowl fought the urge to bristle. There was something naggingly familiar about the Seeker’s field that he couldn’t place - he’d been enframed for too long, his reflexes and senses were dialled too low from lack of use. “Pol told us you were back in residence.”

“Hey, Lesti!” Ignoring the Seeker’s posing, Jazz flung his arms around the other mech’s waist and hugged him tight - much to Prowl’s surprise, Celesti only chuckled and hugged him back.

“It’s good to see you too,” he told Jazz more quietly, something of the veneer stripped from his words. “We were worried.”

“Awwww,” Jazz beamed. “Y’all didn’t forget me!”

“That’s quite enough nonsense, Jazz; of course we wouldn’t forget you.” But Celesti was smiling, a crooked little one that reached his optics and made Jazz beam. “And I hear you’ve gone into business for yourself again. The goodies Polaris brought home were simply _stunning,_ I must say.”

“Aww, thanks. Does my spark good.” Jazz grinned. “I was worried I’d gotten rusty, what with the war an’ all.”

“You? We’d all expire of shock if there were a fleck of rust on you.” Chuckling, Celesti led Jazz further into the room; rumbling with jealousy, Prowl followed. “How have you been holding up, darling?” he asked in a lower tone. “Rumor has it you’ve bounced back remarkably well, but have you any kind of support structure in place?”

Jazz smiled, giving Celesti’s waist a gentle squidge, and just like that, Prowl’s jealousy drained from him. “I got some good friends,” the ex-saboteur told the star, carefully skirting the truth about Prowl, “and makin’ goodies is surprisingly good therapy. Don’t you worry about me.”

“As you wish.”

“That said…” Jazz tilted his helm. “Siri’s still doin’ those spa treatments, right? Once business picks up I think I’m gonna need some pamperin’.”

Celesti’s smile warmed. “Oh, Sirius will be _delighted._ Siri!” He waved at the grounder, beckoning him over, and Prowl found his jealousy roaring back with entirely irrational interest.

Why couldn’t _he_ be the one to pamper Jazz, slaggitall? It was one thing for Jazz to have met and berthed plenty of people before they became exclusive, but now Prowl was frameless he couldn’t even touch his partner, let alone help with his polish or so much as hand him his wax. There was frag-all he could do about it now, no way he could forge himself another frame, and for the first time Prowl considered the tank-churning possibility that they might need to talk about Jazz spending time with other mechs to find what he needed.

It wasn’t the same as getting help in the washracks from another Autobot, somehow- but Prowl forced himself to take the sudden flare of ugliness in his spark by the scruff to look at it head-on.

_Jazz loves me. He would have waited until the next Trek for me to find him again. If he needs or wants something else from some_ one _else with a physical form, that’s something we can discuss like adult mechs who are perfectly secure in their affections for each other, slaggitall._

_...it wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t all attractive in their own rights. -No, that’s more avoiding the point. Jazz finds me attractive, but now I can’t reassure_ myself. ... _being enframed really has warped my thinking about some things. He loves_ me, _not just my physically giving him things. I know that._

Shaking his helm in frustration, Prowl made himself turn his focus away from Jazz and his enthusiastically greeting the groundframe - Sirius - to scrutinise the Seeker. Smooth plating, an impeccable well cared-for finish and a spark that burned bright and clear - to all intents and purposes an average, healthy warbuild Vosian frame. But there was something... 

He frowned, narrowed his optics, and let the comparisons run while Jazz talked. Prowl was sure he’d sensed a similar signature before now; he just had to think.

*

“So, Tauri and Pol not on shift tonight?” Jazz asked casually, dropping into one of the squashy low-rise chairs, his back to the wall. “Them droppin’ by earlier got me thinkin’ they’d be working.”

Celesti had had to excuse himself and get back to working the floor, but Siri had stayed - the groundframe shook his head, leaning his starry hip against Jazz’s chair. “Pol will be later, but Tauri called out tonight. He’ll be sorry he missed you; Pol was telling him stories about what you used to get up to in that club of yours, not to mention that thing with the-”

“Woah woah woah, if it’s the thing I think you’re thinkin’ about that’s the last thing I want people overhearin’!” Jazz grinned, waving his hands about, but his processor was working overtime - he’d been bewildered and wildly curious when Tauri had bolted from the shop that day, and Pol had just looked apologetic and made Tauri’s excuses for him when the little aquatic had come back for his goodies. (One thing Jazz would always sing the stars’ praises for - when they said they kept things confidential, they fragging _meant_ it. Even when they liked you there was no dropping even a hint of a secret.) That combined with Prowl’s conviction he’d been seen had led to their visiting the House the same night, but Jazz was starting to think Prowl would do better scouting about by himself while Jazz kept an optic out down here.

Man, Prowl must be relieved to not have to worry about his frame anymore. What Jazz had heard of the brief, futile shuttle attack - it didn’t bear thinking on too long. Now his partner couldn’t be hurt, and Jazz would give up a heck of a lot more than even Prowl’s amazing wax jobs for that.

“So, I hear business’s been pickin’ up since Iacon changed hands, so to speak,” he offered casually.

“Oh, exponentially,” Sirius laughed. “It’s ‘cause people actually feel safe enough to _live_ in the city now, or to travel here openly. It helps that we no longer have to defend our right to operate here.”

Jazz frowned. “Shockwave messed with y’all, huh?”

“Well… not after the first few millenia after the Ark and Nemesis launched.” Sirius shrugged, and Jazz quietly reminded himself to tone down his inner factionmech. “He kinda gave up trying to run us out after the mechs he sent kept coming back drunk and singing _Ballad of the Drunken Convoy._ "

Jazz laughed. “Lune knows his business, I’ll say that for him.”

“He’s been around the tower complex a few times.” Sirius grinned, a bit starry-eyed over Lune and uncaring who knew it. “But yeah, it’s amazing how many more guests we’re getting in these days. And they’re spending more, too. The economy’s really taken off since that Chosen One of yours took over.”

“Considerin’ the economy was at a flat zero, it had nowhere t’ go but up,” Jazz pointed out wryly. “Not to derogate Roddy’s good work, mind you. I dunno about this Chosen One business, but he’s got resource allocation down to a science.”

Sirius’s expression turned thoughtful. “You must be proud of him.”

Jazz smiled, small but warm with bittersweet memory. “We all are. Pr- my partner kinda took him under his wing a lil bit, when he came to stay with us on Earth.” He sat up as inspiration bloomed, tapping his chin. “You know, I oughta bring him here one of these days.”

“The Prime, here?” Sirius bounced up, all eagerness. “Yes, of course he’s welcome! Oh, you have to bring him on a day when we’re all here. Pol will adopt him on the spot, you know he will.”

“Mech, you read my processor.”

“Awesome,” Siri laughed. “Look, I need to go and circulate some more, but I think Lune wanted to talk to you about the goodie idea - the spiral galaxies were amazing, by the way.”

Jazz preened, deliberately, and Sirius snickered again before resting a hand on Jazz’s shoulder.

“It’s really good to see you again,” he said quietly, and Jazz gave him a crooked grin back.

“Thanks, mech. ‘S good to see y’all doing so well for yourselves too.”

Sirius beamed, then stepped away from Jazz’s table to start a slow circuit of the room in the opposite direction of Celesti’s little patrol route. Jazz took a moment to investigate the neat pile of goodies stacked attractively in the middle of the table, inspecting a crisp rolled confection dusted with silver, then cocked his helm and grinned to himself.

“Hey, Lune,” he chirped, and bit into the goodie.

After a brief pause a tall, silent flier stepped away from the wall and let out a soft, not-quite-displeased noise, inclining his helm in Jazz’s direction without turning his sensors away from his stars. Jazz snickered; some things didn’t change. “Guess you heard all that, huh. Place looks good still.”

“Thank you.” La Lune’s optics were a paler shade of the lavender paint he wore, dim and eerie and giving nothing away; after all this time Jazz still wasn’t entirely sure if the effect was deliberately intended to be off-putting, but he couldn’t help approving. “I understand Polaris has spoken to you about potentially setting up an arrangement for goodies?”

“Sure has, but that wasn’t what I’m here for tonight. Wouldn’t mind pitching a few ideas if y’wanna, though!”

“I’d be happy to discuss it.” Lune straightened slowly, gracefully, every movement deliberate and controlled. It wasn’t quite a dancer’s unthinking grace, nor the intent movements of a predator, but more like Lune was hyper-aware of every movement his body made through space. Jazz had always found it fascinating to watch, though he’d never been able to make heads or bumpers of it. “Our funds are still limited, but I think I can offer you a fair price for your product.”

Jazz waved his concerns away. “You’ll be gettin’ a volume discount, of course.”

Lune’s optics creased faintly. “Now, Jazz. You’ll never stay in business if you give them away.”

“Why,” Jazz complained, mock peevish, “does everyone keep tellin’ me that? This ain’t my first rodeo, y’know.”

“Whatever a rodeo might be, I’m sure it isn’t.” Lune didn’t laugh, but something in his optics as he sat down across from Jazz suggested amusement. “Now. If my figures are correct, here are the volumes we’d need…”

*

Jazz seemed to have things well in hand with the House’s proprietor - and _that_ was a can of morphobots he’d have to open eventually, but at least Jazz didn’t appear to be in any danger. Prowl felt safe enough to wander off, as long as he kept the beacon of that beloved spark close to the center of his awareness.

No one else appeared to be aware of his presence. Even so, Prowl moved with caution to avoid crossing the boundaries of anyone’s frame, even more so than he would have when he’d been enframed himself. Nobody shuddered with sudden, inexplicable tingles or flinched from him. Just as Prowl had cause to expect, given his previous life as a psychopomp with no frame.

Which made Centauri’s reaction to him all the more puzzling - a mystery he couldn’t stop turning over in his head. Not just Centauri’s awareness of his presence, but his outright fear. Wouldn’t a seer, if that was what Centauri was, know a psychopomp on sight?

_Perhaps he is only young,_ Prowl mused as he drifted past a chattering group of minibots. _Jazz said that the last time he visited Centauri hadn’t joined the House yet, and he can’t be much older than Hot Rod. ...Than Rodimus, that is._

_Primus. More young, inexperienced mechs. Perhaps I would be less frightening for him if Jazz spoke to him first..._

Perhaps Prowl could help the shuttle past his fear, if he truly had been seeing wandering sparks without knowing what they were. Without another opportunity to identify just what had seemed so familiar about Centauri’s spark he was reluctant to draw too many conclusions - but then if Jazz had been serious about bringing Rodimus here, perhaps Prowl would get his chance after all.

_And speaking of familiarity..._

The Seeker, Celesti, was working his way around the room and coming close to Prowl’s current position. Without the confusion of new sparks to dodge and his own emotions acting up, it was easier for Prowl to fade back to the wall and observe - Celesti was gracefully sarcastic, utterly self-controlled and expertly giving the impression of effortlessness, a consummate professional, but there was still something behind the drawling wit and dandyish gestures that made war-born instincts prickle. _Danger! Threat!_

Celesti was openly, even aggressively unarmed. There were no weapon mounts on his arms, no faction markings on his wings, and yet as he glided past Prowl’s position there was something about the tilt of his head, the way he smiled, the flash of sharp crimson optics narrowed in amusement...

For a moment, bronze plating glinted red.

Prowl’s doorwings shivered, deeply uneasy, and he slowly, carefully made his way back across the room to Jazz.

Jazz had his head together with La Lune, numbers flashing back and forth between them. This despite a certain aquatic model hanging off his shoulders, giggling every time Jazz loudly and theatrically complained that his new backpack was ever so heavy. Prowl moved within Jazz’s view, just to give him an amused look, and Jazz grinned in response, absolutely devoid of shame. He leaned to one side and Polaris, still unaware of Prowl, squealed happily and kicked his pedes off the floor.

Lune appeared not to notice, immune to the antics of car and boat alike. “So, these two packages for a start, and we can expect shipment…?”

“In two rotations,” Jazz confirmed, tapping the datapad in front of him. “Definitely before y’all open, possibly by shift change depending on business at the shop.”

“That is acceptable.” Lune nodded. “And of course we will feature your name prominently on the display.”

Jazz wriggled, the motion sending Pol swinging like a giggling pendulum. “Can’t wait. ...seriously, thanks for givin’ me this chance, Lune. I feel like I’m startin’ all over an’ you’re the one givin’ me a boost.”

Lune nodded to him; Pol made a muffled ‘aww’ noise and wiggled around to plant his pedes on the ground so he could give Jazz a proper hug.

“You are, in a lot of ways,” he mumbled against Jazz’s bumper; even sitting down, Jazz’s curves beat Pol’s scant height in a hugging contest. “I think you’re incredibly brave.”

“Awww. Just - awww, Pol.” 

“I mean it. And I meant what I said about coming to visit.” Pol hesitated, briefly, then pinged Jazz a file; from Lune’s watchful expression and Jazz’s surprised one, Prowl could only guess it was Pol’s personal comm code.

“You sure, Pol?” Jazz said carefully; the House’s main floor was by no means private. “Last thing I want’s you feelin’ pressured.”

“Nor I,” Lune said softly, but his optics were on the room instead of the mechs at the table. Pol only gave Jazz a small, lopsided smile.

“All of us know something about losing people,” he said, and patted Jazz’s hand.

*

“That was illuminating,” Prowl said softly. They had stayed at the House late enough that the stars had shifted from walking the floor to strutting the stage, and Prowl had had to admit that it had been - educational. But Jazz was well aware that he wasn’t talking about the House’s stage show and tilted his head, keeping his gaze forward for the benefit of those still abroad at this time of the off-shift.

“Yeah?” he murmured softly. “Thought I saw you thinkin’ away back there. Anythin’ juicy?”

“For a given value of,” Prowl replied after a moment’s pause. When Jazz had enthused about the House he hadn’t mentioned a few salient points that Prowl had picked up on, and he wasn’t entirely sure that an open walkway was the best place to pass them on. Instead, he drifted a little closer to Jazz as they walked and let his immaterial fingers brush his partner’s. “Celesti seemed...familiar, somehow, and I don’t mean simply by build type. And I would have liked to see Centauri again, preferably without his seeing me and panicking.”

“We’ll be back when he’s there,” Jazz promised him. “Maybe when I drop off this order.” He patted the datapad in his hand, flush with victory at having secured his first big client.

Prowl chuckled. “Congratulations, Jazz. I’m sure this is the first of many such orders.”

“Slaggin’ straight it is!” Jazz caroled, stepping into an exuberant spin. “This is just the first step. Jazz’s Goodie Parlor is takin’ off!” He wobbled, the uneven footing betraying him. Prowl reached out on instinct to grasp his hand, and Jazz flung out his hand on instinct to accept the help. Both exclaimed in shock when Jazz fell right through his partner to smack nearly headfirst into a lamppost.

“Jazz,” Prowl burst out, as Jazz grunted and picked himself up again. “I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking - are you all right?”

“Think so,” Jazz answered, tentatively prodding his helm. “I don’t feel a dent. ...an’ you ain’t got a thing to apologize for,” he added firmly.

Prowl felt his vents catch, though intellectually he knew he didn’t _have_ any vents and so they were doing no such thing. “...all right,” he murmured, as Jazz shook off his moment of wobble and headed down the road with his usual indomitable cheer - though with a bit more care. Disquieted, he hurried after him.

After the long day they had both had, Jazz declared that he was officially Done; he locked the doors behind them, marched from the Best Little Goodie Shop up into the Best Little Apartment above it, then collapsed face-first onto the berth with no regard for lights or his own bumper. Given that Jazz had covered the rather slapdash berth with fat, squashy foam pillows, Prowl could only chuckle at his theatrics despite himself.

“Really, Jazz,” he murmured, and laughed out loud when Jazz simply arched up enough to waggle his aft in the air.

“...’s all I have to say on th’matter,” came the muffled reply, along with an equally-muffled snicker.

“You are secretly a youngling, aren’t you.”

“Yup! ‘S the only way ta keep yourself young - aft jokes, never not funny.”

“Hmm.” Smile gradually fading as he watched Jazz shuffle into a burrow of cushions, Prowl found himself linking his fingers together to stop himself fidgeting. He scrutinised his hands, the pale golden glow surrounding his form (was it radiating a little further out than yesterday? That only made the lingering unease worse) and once again refrained from side-stepping through the layers of reality to Charr to haunt Scavenger for the rest of his life.

He only realised he’d been standing - floating - in silence for too long when Jazz called over to him, voice worryingly gentle. “Hey, babe? You comin’ ta berth?”

Prowl hesitated. “I don’t want to keep you awake,” he replied just as softly, but simply didn’t have the willpower not to drift over to Jazz’s berth. He reached out and Jazz promptly grabbed for his hand, curling his fingers in a way that meant Prowl could do the same in a facsimile of holding hands. It still meant that Jazz’s hand was pressed up against the tingling prickle of Prowl’s insubstantial form, and after they had tried it the night before only for Jazz to squirm in scanty light-level recharge until Prowl had gently left the berth...

“Frag that,” Jazz said firmly, and tugged.

Reality must have bent to Jazz’s will, because somehow Prowl followed. He curled against Jazz’s side, holding Jazz’s hand and half-buried in the pillows, their pedes brushing despite the sheer amount of padding. Jazz beamed, his smile lighting the dim room, and sighed contentedly as he drifted down the levels towards deep recharge; while psychopomps might not recharge, Prowl still let his mind wander and his senses expand, just in case he was needed.

Neither of them were aware enough to realise it when their hands curled together, warm and just solid enough.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prowl and Jazz pay their respects to the new Prime, and Rodimus picks up on a few things.

“So let me get this straight - you put the lime in the coconut, and - oh, Jazz!”

Jazz, sauntering into the Autobots’ command center like he owned it - belying the fact that he hadn’t actually been inside since he’d gone through and disarmed Shockwave’s security systems prior to it _becoming_ the Autobots’ command center - tilted his head, a wry grin tugging at his mouth as he surveyed Bumblebee and Rodimus Prime. “Boys. Do I wanna know?”

“Probably not,” Bumblebee grinned, and hopped down to greet his former commander with a hug. “Hey, Jazz. You’re looking good. Business treating you well?”

“Oh yeah, business is great,” Jazz grinned, hugging Bumblebee right back and ruffling his helm. “I got a great big order goin’ out regularly, I’m a hip and happenin’ hangout spot for the younglings - life ain’t bad for ol’ Jazz the Handsomest Goodie Guru in Iacon.”

“Jazz,” Bumblebee groaned, then seemed to realize a certain someone hadn’t joined in. “Roddy?” he prodded.

Rodimus Prime blinked. “Oh! Uh. Sorry. There’s a…” He waved a hand vaguely. “Thing. Matrix thing. It distracted me. Hi, Jazz. How’s business?”

Rather than tease the Prime for the lapse in concentration, Jazz shot a pensive look at the wall where Rodimus had been dazedly staring, just to the side of the door. “I think,” he murmured, “there ain’t no hidin’ from this one, babe.”

“Oh dear,” Prowl said softly. He hazed back through the wall - granted, Rodimus’ attention locking onto him in mingled shock and recognition had been startling when Optimus had never been able to see the wandering sparks around him, even during the Treks, but hiding in the wall was the reaction of a jumpy sparkling, not an adult mech. ...once-mech. Psychopomp.

Bumblebee casually glanced around to see what the others were looking at; whatever he was, Prowl fading back into the room through the wall made the minibot leap into the air with a full-throated shout of alarm. 

“Woah, woah, what?!” Jazz blurted, nigh-teleporting to cover Rodimus even as the Prime leaped over his desk, wrist lasers pointing in all directions as he tried to target-lock the threat. Prowl, meanwhile, was standing stock-still and staring at Bumblebee as though he had never seen the other mech before.

“You see me,” he said softly, white optics fixed on Bumblebee’s face. Shaken, vents roaring as his systems struggled on the verge of battle-ready, all Bumblebee could do was nod.

“Primus,” Rodimus gasped out, wrist lasers audibly clicking as they shut down. “Don’t _do_ that to me.”

“I apologize, Prime.”

“Yeah, sorry, Rod.”

“Gah.” Rodimus slid back behind his desk and slumped over it as Bumblebee finally managed to tear his optics away from Prowl enough to give the young Prime a worried glance. “...and please don’t call me that.”

“Roddy, then,” Prowl offered awkwardly. The mech before him only superficially resembled the sleek racer he’d known on Earth: the bright golden spoiler was still there, but the body it was affixed to was as big as Optimus Prime had been. When Rodimus lifted his head, there were lines on his face that hadn’t been there before.

And he seemed very, very embarrassed to exist, if his regrettable impulse to avoid Prowl’s gaze was any indication. “So, uh - welcome back,” he offered, shuffling inelegantly at the mess of datapads on his desk. “Sorry, this is probably the worst possible welcome-back party.”

“Nonsense,” Prowl insisted. “You - both of you,” he amended, nodding at Bumblebee, “are here, and all right. I couldn’t ask for better. ...I’m glad to see you both.”

“Likewise,” Bumblebee managed, thin and strangled though it sounded. “Uh - not that we’re complaining, Prowl, but- Um. _How_ are you back?”

“If we get any more Starscreams, I quit,” Rodimus muttered into his datapads. Prowl blinked before remembering that he didn’t have to, automatically glancing at Jazz, who only shrugged.

“I never told ‘em,” he said with a rueful shrug. “Promised I wouldn’t, remember?”

“Of course I remember, and I trust you,” Prowl said softly, before glancing back to a confused and faintly impatient audience. “...I don’t know anything about Starscream, yet, but I am not a wandering spark despite the destruction of my frame. I may have worn the shell of a transformer, but I have acted as one of Primus’ psychopomps since long before the war - the sole remaining one, now, as far as I can tell.”

Utter silence.

Rodimus was the first to break it, looking as hesitant and confused as that long-ago youngling on his first real Trek of the Homeless. “So - uh, does this...thing mean you’re not going to be going anywhere any time soon?”

Spark easing ever so slightly, Prowl gave him a small, warm smile. “I may have to leave now and again if I’m needed, but I’ll always be somewhere nearby. You don’t need to worry on that count.” Rodimus slumped in relief, and Prowl shot another glance at Jazz. Jazz gave him a subtle gesture, a flicker of fingers through the air: an ‘I’ll tell you later’ gesture.

“But how did you hide it all that time?” Bumblebee burst out, “and _why?_ I thought psychopomps were supposed to treat all sparks equally. Why would you choose a faction?”

“You’re assuming I was the only psychopomp to take a brand,” Prowl told him gently, and Bumblebee blinked. “There were a few on either side, but the attrition of the war meant that I was the only enframed psychopomp left by the time we awoke on Earth. If I had not been on the Ark, I doubt I would have survived that long at all.

“As for the why…” Prowl sighed, tilted his head back as memory rippled through the sparkmatter that made up his existence. “The outcome of the war was clearly going to change the destiny of Cybertron - though perhaps in ways nobody expected or intended. Primus’s interest was not that one brand or the other proved victorious, but that Cybertron’s continued existence and freedom be preserved. And so we entered the war, and cared for the living sparks who fought it. Even knowing there was little we could do to influence the path it took.” Prowl gave them both a small smile, apologetic.

Rodimus squirmed uncomfortably where he sat, and seemed grateful when Bumblebee spoke first. “So… is Primus satisfied with what ultimately happened? I mean - so much has been lost, so many people dead, but we’re trying to build something better this time.”

“I cannot know Primus’s mind,” Prowl admitted. “But I think He is relieved. He seemed… content to rest, when I left Him.”

Rodimus rubbed a hand over his wrist blasters, pensive. “He rests, while we rebuild,” he murmured. “He’s trusting us to build something worth waking up to.”

He looked so overwhelmed, sitting there with the future of Cybertron on his shoulders, that Prowl’s spark broke for him. Optimus had never faced a challenge this great. “That is one burden,” Prowl said, leaning forward to place a hand over Rodimus’s, “that you will never bear alone.” He would have said more but Rodimus startled and gasped at his touch; for a brief moment Prowl thought it was at the strange prickling sensation of touching Rodimus’ plating, but then Jazz appeared beside Rodimus’ desk as quickly as if he were a ghost himself.

“Hey, babe,” Jazz said as casually as he possibly could - Prowl stared at him, the strange urgent look under the casual tone. “How’d that happen?”

He pointed, and Prowl looked back to his and Rodimus’ hands. Touching, perfectly normally, on Rodimus’ desk.

Prowl froze.

“I. Uh.” Rodimus sat perfectly still, optics wide and round and darting between Jazz and Prowl asking wordlessly for help. “I didn’t do it? I think?”

Prowl’s doorwings twitched, then all at once his hand vanished straight through Rodimus’, straight through the desk, and Prowl himself very nearly made a sudden entrance through the ceiling of the room below. 

*

After no small amount of panicked scrambling, all three of the enframed mechs diving to grab Prowl and smacking their helms together, they wound up with Rodimus perching uneasily on his desk chair, Jazz on the desk itself and Bumblebee hovering back and forth between his once-commander and his Prime. Prowl, somehow feeling rather queasy despite no longer having a tank system to upset, was making a valiant effort to cling to Jazz’s hands.

“I don’t understand,” he repeated, voice sounding faint and far away even to himself. “I could never - I don’t understand this at all.”

“Easy, babe,” Jazz soothed as best he could. “Maybe it’s a Matrix thing.”

_Light all around, multifaceted and blazing, tangled pathways like briars growing into twists to nowhere if a spark was unwary or misguided - leading them there, his family, sparks he’d held so dear now buffeted by the surging, strangled energies thrown into Chaos. Finding it at last, the edge of the Well, the welcoming fractal equations drawing them in one by one to rest together and safe from the maelstrom. Turning, uneasy, everything around them deeply wrong tangible despite the siren-song of the Well - no, not today, you can not take me today._

_Moving with the gravitational pull of it, pushing and pulling at the pathways in vain to clear them from the knots the Unmaker’s passing caused, gaining strength to leave once more and gathering himself, so long since he had no frame, so long since the universe scrolled out around him so clear and yet so lonely..._

_...warmth, great blazing flares of warmth, and a shudder that vibrates the very molecules of him. Earthshaking, world-shattering, the passing of the Matrix to another - a sensitive, at last, a sense of rightness and completion and a satisfaction that was the strongest emotion he had felt from Primus in a galactic age._

_And Primus..._

_Struggling to slingshot himself from the gravitational Well, I must be there I must-!_

_In time to witness it, the only remaining vassal of the Creator, two immense sparks thundering towards the Well like an apocalypse on the move, Primus latched on to Unicron with sparking, blinding tendrils of stubborn light, each partially absorbing the other - twin sparks, diametric opposites, beautiful and terrible and unable to let go, and all he could do was his duty even as his own spark was breaking._

_Guiding and push-pulling, a tiny tugboat against their immensity, Primus’ awful weariness and unshakeable relief as they began to circle the Well._

_He cried, then, with no form or frame to support it, and felt a tiny, delicate tendril of profound love brush his intangibility. Lit up, wordless, scoured by love and a last wash of Primus’ strength and joy, Prowl watched his Creator and His opposite sink into the Well..._

“No,” Prowl said faintly. “I think it’s more than that.”

“Does it have anything to do with how the three of us can see you?” Rodimus blurted, then, defensively, “Just an idea.”

“Can everyone see you now?” Bumblebee asked.

“No,” Prowl admitted. “The majority of people cannot. ...although I have been seen by more people than I expected,” he added, thinking of Centauri and the drunkard outside the window.

“Well, I have an excuse,” Rodimus offered dryly, lifting a hand. “Dunno about you two though.”

“You showed signs of sensitivity to wandering sparks before Primacy,” Prowl pointed out, and Rodimus blinked in mild surprise. “Not seer levels of sensitivity, and it shouldn’t account for you seeing me now, but the potential was there. The Matrix simply heightens it to the level at which I become perceptible to you.”

“But that ain’t somethin’ Bee and I have in common with you,” Jazz pointed out.

“Well, what do you two have in common? Aside from being Ops mechs.”

Bumblebee glanced at Jazz. “We’re Earth culture-philes? We almost got eaten by Unicron that one time?”

Rodimus’s and Prowl’s gazes locked, interest registering between them. “Unicron’s presence does change things around him,” Prowl admitted slowly, “just as Primus’s does. It’s possible that being inside him changed the alignment of enough of your spark-threads - it’s not dangerous,” Prowl added quickly, as both Jazz and Bumblebee started to look a little green around the vents.

“Not somethin’ I wanted to hear,” Jazz complained.

“Yeah, I don’t wanna go over all Unicronian,” Bumblebee shuddered. “Just look at what he did to Megatron.”

“Highly unlikely,” Prowl said flatly. “What Unicron did to Megatron was more along the lines of a sparkeater digesting a spark into its component threads and then attempting to rebuild it. As Primus creates, Unicron can only alter what is already there. ...Created, that is.”

Jazz patted his hand gently, inwardly thrilling when he met the faintest hint of resistance at the touch. “I, uh, I guess that’s reassurin’?”

“I’m sorry.” Prowl shook his head lightly, determinedly perking his doorwings higher. “Think of it this way - do you remember when Chip told us of his pollen allergy?”

“Hey, yeah - something about because he got older his body chemistry changed and he started sneezing at stuff he never used to be allergic to.” Bumblebee perked up, looking hopeful. “So you’re saying because we got exposed to too much Chaotic Evil, we’re kind of allergic now?”

“In a sense,” Prowl allowed, quietly relieved as Jazz started to grin. “Less an allergy, perhaps, but certainly a reaction to overexposure. Primus’ nature inspired growth and life - Unicron’s nature was chaos and change. Neither was deliberate, but just as Primus’ spark radiation was what originally gave life to our predecessors, Unicron alters everything he touches. The pathways to the Well were twisted into knots just from the wake of his passing.”

“But he’s gone, right? Properly gone?” Rodimus pressed.

“Oh yes. His spark essentially pulled itself to pieces in the Well - sometimes those who have no wish to stay themselves dissolve to neutral sparkmatter, raw material for new sparks to grow from. I had thought- I had wondered whether Primus would do the same.” Prowl paused for a moment to gather himself, Jazz gently squeezing his hands again, which gave Rodimus a chance to rewind what he’d just heard and break in with a growing expression of horror.

“Wait, hold on - Primus is in the _Well?_ "

“Well - yes,” Prowl answered, baffled, and grew even more baffled when Rodimus sank down in his chair, both hands gripping his helm.

“We killed our god. I don’t even know what a god _does_ but we _killed_ him. What are we supposed to do now?”

“Oh, slag,” Jazz muttered, getting up to bend over Rodimus and rub his back. “Roddy? Easy now. Deep vents. You’re fine, we’re fine, we’re all fine, the planet ain’t crumblin’ around us and it’s fine.”

“This never would have happened on Optimus’s watch,” Rodimus muttered into his hands.

“Rodimus, Primus was on the way to the Well for millennia,” Prowl protested. “You weren’t even built yet. This isn’t your fault.”

“It’s my fault somehow.”

“Stop that.” Jazz tapped his Prime’s helm. “Or no more goodies.”

That - finally - got a soggy giggle out of Rodimus, and with that he allowed the other three to jolly him back from the brink of panic. They wound up on the floor, more or less, Prowl hovering over them as Rodimus had his lap colonized by the two Ops bots. Jazz reached out to Prowl, Prowl reached back on instinct, and just for a moment their hands _caught_ for all the world like they were both metal before Jazz’s hand fell through again, leaving Prowl off balance.

“That wasn’t me that time,” Rodimus pointed out unnecessarily, as Prowl stared at his hand.

“Maybe it’s a new psychopomp thing, what with Unicron and Primus and all,” Bumblebee mused. “I mean, I’ve never seen Starscream able to touch anybody, and I think he would if he could-”

Prowl frowned. “Why does Starscream keep coming up?”

“...oh.” Bumblebee rubbed the back of his helm, exchanging rueful glances with Rodimus. “You don’t know about that.”

“Know about what?”

“It’s hard to explain…” Rodimus hedged.

Jazz sighed. “Starscream’s a ghost, and he likes to hang around Autobot HQ and make life extra-annoying for Roddy,” he said bluntly.

“...o-kay. I guess it was easier to explain than I thought.”

Prowl stared, then straightened slowly as his optics narrowed. “He what.”

“Uh-oh,” Jazz sing-songed, and both Rodimus and Bumblebee’s optics widened at the expression on Prowl’s face.

“Starscream is not a psychopomp, and he shouldn’t be visible to anyone if he is a wandering spark,” Prowl said definitively, “Regardless of Unicron’s interference. Sparkmatter is on the wrong spectrum, and either way no-one else’s spark has been visible.”

Rodimus winced at that, and Prowl reached over to pat his helm. It was less of a shock when he connected, ever so briefly, on the second touch of plating.

“So, that worked,” Rodimus blurted in an attempt to change the subject. Bumblebee only shook his head where the younger mech couldn’t see before meeting Jazz’s Significant Look - so many hugs and goodies in Rodimus’ future, whether he knew it or not. “Hey, maybe you’re overthinking it. Have you tried grabbing Jazz just on instinct? ‘Cause that seemed to work just now.”

“Perhaps,” Prowl admitted with some reluctance. “I have never been particularly good at deliberately putting things out of my mind or trying to trick my own perceptions. It was always too risky, either for the sparks I was guiding or because I might miss something crucial.”

“If I’da known sparkeaters and stuff was why, I wouldn’t have teased so much,” Jazz grumbled quietly. Prowl reached over and patted his helm in turn and froze again when his palm rested lightly between Jazz’s sensor horns. Both of them sat stock-still, rooted to the spot, afraid to speak in case the spell broke.

“Woah,” Rodimus whispered. “Maybe I was right.”

*

They didn’t manage to replicate the feat the rest of the day. As he’d said, Prowl was terrible at not overthinking things.

“But hey, now we know it’s possible,” Jazz told him jovially amid his whirlwind of goodie-making. “And it’ll happen again, just you watch. Before you know it you’ll be makin’ goodies alongside me.”

Prowl frowned to himself as Jazz poured his mix out into the tray. “...I’d rather just be able to hold you,” he murmured.

“...awww, babe.”

Jazz put the bowl down and held an arm out to Prowl. Despite not being able to touch him, Prowl curled into the shelter of Jazz’s embrace, and allowed that beloved spark’s nearness to soothe him as Jazz crooned over his helm.

“We’re gonna be okay, you an’ me,” Jazz murmured. “No matter what else happens, we got each other, and we’re gonna be okay.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jazz makes a delivery, and Prowl makes a point.

“Avon calling!” Jazz trilled at Sunset House’s outer door in his best operatic soprano. It was long before the House was due to open and The Best Little Goodie Shop was delivering its first batch of goodies.

After a few moments the door slid open and La Lune stepped aside to let him in, giving Jazz the now-usual slight incline of his helm in greeting. Jazz highly doubted that the flier would have understood the reference, but eh - Prowl had, and the sound of his partner’s exasperatedly fond huff followed him in.

“Hey Lune! So, where’d you want these?”

“The workstation belowlevels, unless any of them require special storage.” La Lune locked the door behind them, then unconcernedly held out his hands for some of the boxes so Jazz didn’t have to balance the whole stack as Lune showed him the way.

“Nah, should be fine now they’re set,” Jazz replied, ambling alongside him. “This is pretty awesome, just sayin’ - kinda weird seein’ the place empty, though.”

“Polaris will most likely be along shortly. The stars are currently still in recharge but he requires less.”

“Heh, fair ‘nough.”

Jazz followed La Lune down a set of stairs - the handrail, he noted with mild interest, didn’t match the metal of the stairs, and must have been installed after the House mechs had settled here - into the workstation proper. It was well-lit and clean, but a bit cramped, although Jazz supposed Polaris had smaller space requirements than he or Lune did. “Is here all right?” he asked, nodding to the worktable in the center of the room.

“That’s fine,” Lune nodded. “We have place cards with your business information here - will you check them and make sure they’re accurate?”

He handed Jazz a smaller box, this one filled with thin metal cards marked with “Best Little Goodie Shop” and the comm code Jazz had set up for business purposes, different from his personal code. The glyphs were plain, Standard on the top and Simplified on the bottom, but holding one in his hands made Jazz’s spark flutter with glee.

“Yeah, they’re perfect, Lune,” he said, glancing up to grin at his first big client. “Thanks, seriously.”

“This is part of your compensation,” Lune told him. “Speaking of, I have your payment upstairs.”

As he led Jazz back up to the foyer, Jazz glanced up hoping for a sign of soft gold light. _Prowl, how y’ doin’?_

*

It went against every idea of privacy he had encountered as an enframed mech to drift about in someone’s private quarters without leave, but it was just something that Prowl was going to have to get reacquainted with as a psychopomp proper. Or - whatever it was he was becoming.

The glow around his frame was gradually getting brighter and reaching further, and talking to the other Autobots had hardly reassured him on that front. Prowl had existed in one form or another for far longer than he’d ever openly admitted, even to Jazz, and very little of his vorns of experience applied to- anything about what was happening to him now. On the other hand, he might be able to do something for Centauri, even if it was only to express his lack of harmful intentions.

Drifting along the dimly-lit halls - dimly-lit by clusters of carefully cultured pockets of crystals, which made his sparkmatter ache - Prowl aimed in a general sort of fashion for the sense of recharging sparks ahead. Two recharging deeply, one rising up through the last, shallow layers towards waking, and - hmm. One just waking up. He held back, slowing his already meandering pace, and deliberately stuck to the hallways - the last thing he wanted to do was frighten the mech wobbling his way by appearing halfway through a wall.

As such, the first thing Tauri’s bleary optics lit on as he turned the corner was a softly-glowing Praxian floating several milli-inches off the floor. The only reason he didn’t shriek and run was because his legs didn’t seem to want to work anymore.

“Please don’t worry,” the floating horror began, raising its hands. “I won’t hurt you. I _can’t_ hurt you, as a matter of fact.”

Tauri stared. “You can talk,” he said numbly.

That got him a hint of a frown, and for all he was three times the ghost-thing’s size he still cringed - the apparition must have noticed, its voice was softer when it spoke next. “I can. My name is Prowl - I am a psychopomp, a guide for those wandering sparks who have yet to find the Well.”

“...this is slagging weird,” Tauri replied faintly, and to his neverending shock the ghost-thing - _Prowl_ \- just chuckled.

“Yes, I’m afraid it is,” he agreed. “Unfortunately there are few enough people left to explain this sort of thing now. ...and I rather had the impression you had had a bad experience yourself, when I first saw you.”

He’d said it very gently, but Tauri’s plating clamped tight in defensive embarrassment. “Uh, _yeah._ Who wants to see this kind of stuff? I never asked to get a good look at what’s left behind when the factionmechs are done with each other.”

Prowl’s face softened with sympathy, which did nothing for Tauri’s embarrassment. “I see. It hasn’t been at all comfortable to be a seer in these times - especially with no active psychopomps. You have my apologies, for what it’s worth.”

“Wait - wait. Go back.” Tauri flapped his hands. “To be a _what?_ "

“A seer. One who can see-”

“There’s a _word_ for this slag?”

The shuttle’s voice was an incautious, loud squawk of mingled disbelief, unwilling relief and rage. Prowl winced faintly as all three of the drowsing sparks beyond the wall flashed to awakening, and opened his mouth to reply with a warning, but Tauri was already off and ranting. “Do you know how long I thought I was crazy? Not the normal kind of crazy that everybody is, I mean besides Lune probably, but actually _stark raving wingnuts_ , seeing things that weren’t there? And it was always fragging _horrible_ things that do not belong in anybody’s memory banks, like people who were mutilated or, or, or on _fire-”_

“Centauri-”

“-why couldn’t I hallucinate a big oilcake, I thought. Or a light painting. I like me some fragging light paintings.” The look Tauri shot Prowl was purely aggrieved. “Just to be clear, just because there’s a word for it doesn’t mean I’m happy about it or I want it. If you’re here to tell me how to turn it off-”

“That isn’t-”

“...Tauriiiii.”

Centauri stiffened. Polaris, bleary and sleep-fogged in the doorway, was clearly struggling to stay both upright and relatively kind. “Sweetspark, if you’re practicing your lines or something, that’s fine, but can you please do it downstairs?”

Tauri gave Prowl a wild-opticked glance. Prowl shrugged apologetically; Polaris still couldn’t see him. “...right. Sorry, Tugs,” Tauri ground out.

Pol shuffled back to berth without another word, and Tauri muffled a groan into his hand. “Go away,” he hissed. “Come back if you can make it stop. Otherwise just go away.”

“Very well,” Prowl murmured, though his voice’s volume wasn’t an issue. “I’m sorry to have brought you distress.”

Tauri blew harshly through his vents. “...at least you told me the truth,” he admitted in a mutter.

“That I will always promise you. ...If you have questions, anything at all, I can usually be found where Jazz is. If I have - business to take care of, he won’t mind if you leave a message with him for me, and then I can let you know when I am available when I return.”

“Right, sure, whatever. Just - just go, all right?” Tauri flailed at him again, forcefully trying to brush him back down the hallway without getting close enough to touch - or be touched, at that. All Prowl could do was honour his wishes, incline his head and and retreat.

*

“Hey babe,” Jazz murmured as cool tingles wrapped around his shoulders. “Find out anythin’?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.” By the time Prowl returned, Jazz was taking his leave of La Lune and Tauri hadn’t come down. Neither had Polaris - despite being an early riser, it seemed being woken before he was ready disagreed with him and he had gone back to recharge for a little longer. Well, they all had very active day jobs.

Prowl shook his helm slightly, then nestled close to Jazz’s back and sighed softly. “Centauri has been able to see wandering sparks without anyone to tell him how or why. It seems he only ever saw the incoherent sparks wandering after dying in battle, or so I extrapolate from what he told me. Regardless of where he came online, that is not too far of a stretch.”

“Ouch.” Jazz whistled quietly, strolling along the street with an optic on the passers-by. “No wonder he freaked out when he saw you. Musta been a shock seein’ someone in one piece.”

“And responding to him. It can be extremely disorienting to suddenly be incorporeal when you were in the middle of battle, last you checked.” He felt it when Jazz flinched and cursed his choice of words, tightening his arms around his partner without a second thought. 

He also felt Jazz’s startled intake at the brief pressure, the slide of Prowl’s arms over his plating. Jazz’s steps faltered; before one of the passing mechs on the street could do more than give him a concerned look, suddenly no-one was paying attention to one wobbly grounder anymore.

_"-ignore me, will he? I’ll show him-”_

_“Hey! You gotta pay for that-”_

_“-oh, shut up!”_

Jazz had already clocked the source of the disturbance, so he was watching when the enraged flier hauled off and socked the shopkeeper across the face. “Hey!” he barked, ready to fling himself into his altmode and give the jerkaft a taste of vigilante justice.

“Jazz, wait!” Prowl moved in front of him, making his joints lock before his transform cog could fully activate. “Stop. Let me.”

“Let you? Babe-” But Prowl was already turning, running over empty air. The angry flier, having successfully knocked the shopkeeper to the floor, straightened and turned, optics blazing red. Jazz watched in disbelief as those optics sharpened and focused directly on Prowl.

“Well, well,” he taunted in a voice Jazz would never, _could_ never forget, and Jazz stiffened, reaching for a sidearm he no longer wore. “I thought I’d seen the last of you. Still can’t stop being a busybody, can you, Prowl?”

“I might say the same of you, Starscream.” Prowl’s voice was calm, flat ice to Starscream’s fire. “I doubt you have permission to ride that mech’s body, much less assault people with it. Get out of him this instant.”

“I don’t think I shall.” Starscream’s mocking smirk looked all kinds of wrong on a stranger’s face. “And you’re in no position to be issuing commands. What are you going to do without a body?”

Prowl’s voice went from ice to steel. “I have given the only warning I intend to give.”

“Oh, stuff it!”

Jazz might have been angry on his partner’s behalf - should have been, according to every social programming he’d ever had - but he could see Prowl’s hand curling, and knew that steel in his voice. He’d heard it before, just before an enframed Prowl had taken down a sparkeater with a single blow.

The staff shimmered to life in Prowl’s hand, and Jazz smiled as the psychopomp swept it through the stolen flier’s body to fling Starscream straight out of him and onto the street. The golden halo around his partner’s frame flared, deep and bright, and before Starscream’s shade could rally Prowl was _there,_ pinning him in place with the staff’s blaze of crystals and a pede heavy on Starscream’s canopy. Golden light burst like a solar flare and Jazz frantically reset his visor once, twice-

“That’s not - _you’re_ not - how are you doing that?!” Starscream sputtered, seemingly unable to stop himself. “You’re _dead!_ "

The unfortunate mech Starscream had possessed fell to his knees, seemingly forgotten about; Prowl raised his voice slightly, his optics still fixed and fierce on Starscream’s face. “Jazz, make sure the flier isn’t hurt, please. I’ll be there in a moment.”

Jazz wasn’t going to reply, not wanting ‘mech who talks to himself’ added onto his business cards, then he noticed it. Movement on the street had stopped dead. Every single mech and femme was staring, round-opticed, at the see-through Seeker - and the glyph-marked Praxian with the halo of an Avatar of Primus that gleamed and rippled off the walls, off plating, visible and clear as day. 

“...sure thing,” he managed, after a brief goggle of his own. He sidled over to the wobbly-looking flier, scanned him with a murmur of permission and patted him on the shoulder as reassuringly as he could, but his gaze always slid back to Prowl. Prowl, who had apparently slipped into the Primal Vernacular as easily as Cybertronian Standard, and hadn’t seemed to realise they had an avid and wildly curious audience.

 _"Thy spark is thine own, Wanderer,”_ he intoned. He should know, of anyone. _"Return to the Well of thine own volition, before I must act further.”_

Well, at least the poor mech Starscream had possessed wouldn’t be left with an unfortunate reputation as a rageaholic.

Starscream was scowling, but his reply was in the same language, although some of the formality was lost by virtue of his… Starscreamness. _"Your Well rejected me. I know not the reason, nor do I care. This world is still mine to walk.”_

Prowl’s optics narrowed. _"The Well rejects no one,”_ he said, though Jazz could hear the faintest uncertainty in his voice. _"If the Well could manage Unicron, it will certainly not choke on you.”_

 _“Unicron.”_ Starscream scoffed. _"What is Unicron? Nothing but hunger.”_

_“You carry more than your share of hunger yourself.”_

“Oh, slag off,” Starscream huffed, switching to Standard. “And let me up. I promise I’ll be a good little mechling.”

Prowl did not look convinced, but he stepped back. As he did so, some of his aura’s brightness drained away. The spectators started glancing around, confused; _they can’t see him anymore,_ Jazz realized. “What did you think you were doing, anyway?” Prowl asked, pointedly not putting his staff back - wherever it went when he wasn’t using it.

Starscream eyed it suspiciously as he sat up. “What did I think…? Can’t I just cause some wanton mayhem for its own sake?” Prowl’s expression clearly said _pull the other one._ “Look, if the Prime’s going to ignore me, he’s got only himself to blame for what happens.”

“...you possessed someone and punched a shopkeeper because you wanted to get Rodimus’s attention?”

And Jazz knew that tone too. Prowl had gone full-on protective warking mama chocobo over Rodimus, and Starscream was about to experience just how fierce a psychopomp could be over the sparks he shepherded. Oh, and lucky Jazz, he seemed to have a front-row seat. The spectators in the street could very clearly still see and hear _Starscream,_ too.

Starscream only huffed, though Jazz noted that he was still keeping a wary optic on Prowl’s staff - knowing their luck he’d try to steal it, and wouldn’t that be hilarious? “Like you have any room to talk. Either your little light show there was to impress your _boyfriend_ or show off for these idiots, since _I_ certainly haven’t seen anything of you after Scavenger killed you.”

“You seem to be struggling under several misapprehensions,” Prowl said coldly, and Jazz could almost feel the ice crackling along every word. “But that is hardly unusual for you, Starscream.” He straightened and this time the halo around him brightened in measurable increments, the glyphs marked - inscribed, not painted - onto his plating brightening from barely-there to a blaze of night-sky-blue. There was something off - something different - something Jazz couldn’t put his digits on right away, but he trusted the quiet instinct that told him it was nothing that would do him or Prowl any harm.

Starscream, on the other hand...

“I am the last of Primus’ psychopomps,” Prowl said slowly, every word plain and clear. “I am the one remaining guardian of the sparks Primus loved. I am the beacon, the rescue, the light in the Dark. I am what is when all other lights go out.” He took a step forward, and Starscream twitched away. “I have banished sparkeaters to entropy, brought back lost sparks from the clutches of things you cannot even imagine. Do you know what the monsters in the dark fear, Starscream? Do you know what haunts them, as they crawl through the eons of their exile?”

Prowl took another step forward, leaned in close; it didn’t matter that Starscream was taller, only that he was backpedalling in growing alarm as Prowl’s halo blazed brighter and stronger and, Jazz realised with a start, had begun reflecting off the walls again as Prowl forced Starscream to back down. _He’s doing it himself and he don’t even realise it, he’s goin’ visible an’ they can all see what he’s doin’, they can all hear him spell out what he is!_

_...They can all hear him say he’s on the side o’ the angels._

“What those dark things fear, Starscream,” Prowl said softly, “is _me._ And if you so much as think about playing games with Rodimus, or any other spark I watch over, so help me _you will have me to answer to._ "

Starscream had more than earned his singular reputation: he was impulsive, combative, stubborn as the Pit and almost reflexively contrary. But he hadn’t survived as long as he had at Megatron’s side without learning to, on occasion, _back the frag down._

“You’ve made your point,” he bit out, sounding like he was swallowing glass to say it. Someone started a ragged cheer, which was picked up by at least half the spectators before Starscream put it to an ugly death with a glare.

Prowl was shocked into his normal level of glowy-aura by the cheer, and glanced at Jazz as much for reassurance as to make sure he and the groggy flier were all right. Jazz grinned and gave him a thumbs-up, uncaring that his patient was watching him apparently gesture approvingly at empty air. “You’re okay now, buddy,” he said aloud, patting the flier’s shoulder.

“Um…”

“My name’s Jazz. What’s yours?”

“...Brightside,” the flier mumbled, looking far too dour and bewildered for a name like that. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Yeah, you took a little trip without meanin’ to.”

“No, I’m supposed to be at the bridge. Rodimus Prime says we can finish fixing the bridge by the end of the on-cycle if we all pull together.” Brightside pulled himself up with only a momentary wobble; at his full height he rivaled the Decepticon Triplechangers. “He’s counting on us. I gotta go.”

Chuckling, Jazz flapped a hand at him. “Off you go, then, mech.”

Brightside nodded to him, but rather than take off right away he trotted over to offer a hand to the shopkeeper still nursing the mark from his fist. The shopkeeper hesitated only a moment before accepting the help, and waved when Brightside finally transformed and took off.

Meanwhile, Starscream took another inching step back and froze when Prowl gave him a gimlet stare.

“I _said_ you’d made your point,” he grumbled, giving the lit staff another considering look before his optics darted back to the bigger threat.

Prowl met his optics, held his gaze for a long, uncomfortable moment, then made a dismissive motion that raised Starscream’s hackles instantly. “I suggest you find a way to the Well, Starscream. One way or the other.”

The Seeker snarled at him, then faded from sight and fled - Prowl followed the dissipating sense of his spark until he was satisfied Starscream wasn’t about to go after Rodimus or start chasing after another person to try and overpower. He sighed softly, then allowed the staff to fade back into pure energy and turned to the familiar feel of Jazz’s beloved spark.

“That,” his partner said, “was _so cool._ "

Prowl shook his helm, starting to smile, then startled like a deer as one of the observers on the street found the nerve to pluck at Jazz’s elbow.

“Excuse me,” the mech said, optics wide and bright. “But - what just happened-”

Jazz made a valiant effort not to react poorly to the unexpected touch, after Starscream’s little show, and made an excellent job of it; he grinned cheerfully at the stranger and plunged right into Autobot Jazz, Totally Reassuring as though he’d never stopped. “No worries, my mech, he won’t be back. Ol’ Starscream’s run off like-”

“Not him,” the other mech interrupted, and oh frag practically everyone else on the street was homing in and Prowl looked both mortified and alarmed, awww. “The - the avatar. What’s happening? Is it because of the new Prime?”

“Rodimus is reclaiming Cybertron for the Primes,” someone else exclaimed. “That must have been a sign that he really is Primus’ Chosen!”

“Ohhh, slag me,” Jazz muttered. “Prooowl? Help? We didn’t go in t’ start a religious movement today.”

“People will reach for what they need,” Prowl murmured, though he still sounded more alarmed than beatific. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

Jazz gave the slowly-closing-in crowd and all their hopeful and excited optics a look that another mech might have given a pack of hungry Sharkticons. Prowl knew his partner, and Jazz would be dancing around those Sharkticons with a wink and a smile. Metallivorous life forms he could _handle._ This? Not so much.

He had to be visible again. _Quickly._

“We ought to build a temple,” said the one who was sure that this was a sign, “that’s what we ought to do. Or at least a marker.”

“We ought to rebuild the temple that was in the central plaza-”

“-sure, but the Avatar appeared _here,_ so-”

Prowl had no need of temples. Or markers. He didn’t need them, and Jazz was looking even more nervous, the sense of his beloved-other sending out signal-flares of panic at the thought that he might be _responsible_ for whatever these people did-

_"I have no need of temples.”_

Silence swept over the street in the wake of his voice. Prowl knew without looking that he was visible again, and had the crowd’s undivided attention. For a moment he quailed - public speaking had been Optimus Prime’s department for a _reason_ \- but Jazz murmured to him, half encouragement and half plea, and in his partner’s presence he found the strength to meet their optics.

“A temple would imply that I am superior to you,” he explained, firm and calm, just like instructing a young and impulsive Hot Rod. “Or that I can hear or answer prayers, or intervene in your lives. I cannot. I am no different than you - spark of Primus, with a duty to perform.”

A round of shuffling rippled through the crowd. “Thank you for your instruction, Avatar,” the closest one offered. “And thank you for banishing Starscream.”

“‘Talked sense into,’ rather,” Prowl said dryly. “I have no doubt we’ll be hearing from him again, until he finds his own path to the Well. And I am no Avatar - only the last psychopomp of Cybertron. I am a guide and guardian, nothing more.”

The crowd muttered amongst itself and Jazz shifted uneasily; Prowl focussed on his partner’s uneasiness, the urge to _protect._ If he vanished out of sheer embarrassment, then Jazz would have to deal with the crowd all alone, and that _would not do._

“So,” someone in the cluster of mechs quavered. “No temple?”

Prowl almost laughed.

“Rodimus Prime has begun rebuilding so that everyone has access to energon, a safe and secure home of their own and the ability to make a life for themselves,” he said firmly. “If Primus required worship, it would be worship in the form of love.”

That got him a round of blank looks, a scattering of considering looks he _really_ wasn’t sure about, and Jazz pulling the kind of expression that meant he was torn between melting and laughing hysterically. Prowl rewound the last few sentences in his mind and clarified in no small haste.

“Care for each other. Look after each other. We are all family, we are all sparks of Primus, and He - He loves us. All of us. Rodimus is doing his best, the best way he knows how, and he is relying on everyone else to do the same.”

And Prowl could only hope that this mess was safely contained; otherwise Roddy would never come out from under his desk again.

*

In the time it took for them to get back to the Best Little Goodie Shop, Jazz gradually worked out what had bothered him during the showdown with Starscream.

“Hey, babe?” he said after locking up the apartment. “You, uh - you kinda lost your sigil there.”

Prowl turned, confused, and automatically reached to touch the Autobot sigil on his chest - and instead brushed a glowing circle in the same deep blue as his glyphs. His doorwings had lost their police decals to something strangely textured, but it took Jazz coming closer and inspecting the pattern to figure out what had changed.

“Praxus,” he confirmed, sounding shaken. “Babe, you’ve got a relief map of Praxus all up on your doors.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also known as "That Time Prowl Accidentally Almost Sparked Off A Religious Orgy."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Roddy gives new meaning to the phrase "commanding a desk," and Celesti does the impossible and bluescreens Jazz. (Bluescreening Prowl was a bonus.)

“As the Prime, I’m seriously considering _never coming out from under the desk._ "

“Sounds good to me,” Daniel Witwicky commented, popping another chocolate egg (a present from his grandfather) in his mouth. “You done with that _Spider-man_?”

Rodimus passed the comic book over, and Danny traded it for a _Thor_ he’d dropped ice cream on that one time but managed to save with quick action and a lot of napkins. Rodimus - he’d been Hot Rod then - had called it a victorious rout of the encroaching Deceptidessert forces. The pages were rumpled and tended to stick, but the adventures of the Odinson continued apace. Rodimus balanced the little comic book on his knee and expertly flicked open the first page with the multitool folding out from his index finger.

“Well,” he mused aloud, “at least we mostly got the bridge done.”

Danny nodded over his comic. “Grapple said once he shaves those posts down he can set them in place tomorrow, and then you’ll be all finished.”

“If I never see another bridge again in my life it’ll be too soon.”

“...there’s five more bridges leading out of the city.”

Rodimus groaned, rubbed the bridge of his nose. “No, no more bridges. Just no. We’ll just catapult people back and forth.” Danny dissolved into giggles. “What? We’ll put some pillows down at the landing site. Nice soft landing.” Roddy started to grin as Danny made splorfling noises. “I mean, as long as the wind doesn’t change.”

Danny kicked his shin, whooping with mirth; Roddy finally lost his straight face and joined in too. Neither of them heard Magnus enter the office, as a result; only when his legs appeared in front of them did they realize he was there at all.

“Rodimus,” Magnus rumbled once Rodimus and Daniel had gotten their giggles under control. “There’s been… an event. Starscream was involved.”

“I _know,_ Magnus. He set work back on the bridge. I was there.”

“No, another event.” Magnus handed down a datapad. Against his better judgement, Rodimus accepted it. “I’ve taken the liberty of summoning Jazz to headquarters, and asked him to bring Prowl.”

“Okay, first, Jazz is retired, you can’t summon him anywhere. Second - oh, slag me.” Rodimus buried his face against the datapad with a groan, and Danny thought very seriously about kicking Magnus in the shin.

“What did he do this time?” he asked, but the only reply Rodimus gave was another heartfelt groan.

“Jazz may be retired, but this situation involves him too deeply to be ignored,” Magnus said sternly. He might have said more, but Danny was already poking Roddy’s knee until he tilted the datapad so the human could see. His jaw promptly dropped.

“Are you serious?” he demanded, voice rising up the octaves, and he couldn’t even pause to be embarrassed because- “Prowl seriously ran Starscream out of town?!”

Magnus huffed; clearly that wasn’t the point he was trying to make, but in all fairness, the mech went on to answer the question. “That is what we have to determine when they arrive.”

“Oh man,” Rodimus moaned, and Danny reached up to pat his knee as he continued to read.

Jazz arrived at Autobot HQ by the time Magnus had begun to look annoyed as well as impatient and Danny had finished spluttering. “Hey, Danny boy!” he cheered as he entered, crouching and spreading his arms for a hug. “Long time no see!”

“Hi Jazz!” Danny didn’t quite run to the mech, but it was close. Jazz squidged him tight with the same deliberate care of every Earth-stationed Autobot, and Danny breathed in the familiar scent of wax and warm systems as he hugged Jazz back. “So what’s with you and Prowl starting a religious revival?”

“....aw, frag.” Jazz shot a rueful glance at Prowl, who had gone positively translucent with embarrassment. “It was an accident. We couldn’t just leave that poor mech to get run ragged by ol’ Screamer, but one thing led to another, and, well…”

“But that’s the coolest part,” Daniel told him earnestly. “The report said Prowl knocked him right out of the guy he was possessing and scared the oil out of him with the most badass speech in the history of Cybertron!”

Jazz’s visor flickered as he blinked, mulling that over for a moment. “The report really said that?”

“Well, not in so many words, but I could tell that’s what Skids meant to say.”

“Aww, heh.” Jazz gently ruffled Danny’s hair. “I’m so glad you’re here, Danny-bit. Y’hear that, Prowl? And you thought you weren’t any good at speeches.”

“I’m still not,” Prowl muttered, as Daniel peered curiously at what to him looked like Nobody There.

“Uh, Jazz? Is Prowl… there?”

“He’s there,” Jazz confirmed. “He’s still workin’ on turnin’ visible at will, but he’s there.” He directed his gaze to Magnus. “I’ll play translator for him, if that’s okay.”

Magnus, looking deeply uncomfortable with the whole situation - hello, fellow skeptic - nodded to him. “Very well. ...Rodimus, please get out from under the desk,” he added. Clearly talking to two mechs who weren’t visible was one mech too many.

“Why don’t you join me down here instead,” Rodimus invited.

“That would be logistically difficult.”

“Roddy?” Prowl craned his head, a bit of color flooding back into his sparkmatter. “What in the world are you doing down there?”

“Hey Prowl.” Roddy waggled a hand at him from under the desk; Danny briefly considered pulling a face at Roddy being able to see Prowl when he couldn’t, but lost the thought when Jazz ambled around the desk and promptly crammed himself into what space was left to give Roddy a hug of his own. “-gwak!”

“Hey kiddo,” Jazz said cheerily. “Long day?”

“You have no idea,” Rodimus squeaked, then gave up and burrowed into Jazz’s arms just as Danny had done, giving his human friend a sheepish sort of smile when they fetched up almost nose-to-nose against Jazz’s bumper. 

“This is very touching,” Magnus said flatly, in the tone of voice that _strongly implied_ that there was a time and place for cheery-cute and this wasn’t it, “but the matter of an unexpected spiritual experience in a public place is still a serious one.”

Prowl’s expression contorted into something complicated before he sighed and moved around to sit by the underspace of Rodimus’ desk. He couldn’t quite make himself entirely visible on command yet - after extensive experimentation in Jazz’s apartment they had worked out that at least part of the problem was Prowl being _used_ to being invisible and intangible when he was without a frame. It took some heavy-duty mental gymnastics to change his base assumptions about his own sparkmatter, but that was something Jazz had always excelled at, and Prowl had been a tactician for a very long time, too. Tacticians did not keep people alive if they couldn’t adapt to changing situations, but this was an extreme case. He hadn’t even considered being able to become visible before touching Starscream, and he had a strange feeling that he wasn’t finished changing yet.

Still, he could and did manage a faint wash of visible colour, even if it wasn’t all over and all at once like Starscream. ( _Shows what happens when someone’s desperate for attention,_ Jazz had said, and Prowl agreed. He didn’t _like_ standing out, as a general rule.) Magnus’ optics flared when he tracked the soft undertow of light and worked out what shape it was tracing, and Prowl gave him a literally faint, apologetic smile. “Hello, Magnus. Danny. It’s good to see you both- Jazz, I don’t think they can hear me properly.”

Jazz passed the message along, still tangled up with Rodimus under the desk while Daniel tucked himself under both their chins. Magnus sighed and claimed the Prime’s chair, because if he wasn’t going to get the dignified debrief he wanted, he could at least be comfortable while his Prime, the Prime’s best friend, a disenframed psychopomp he could barely see, and the former head of SpecOps and current goodie maker cuddled on the floor. “Hello, Prowl,” he said heavily. “And, thank you for dealing with the Starscream situation, even if the end result was more complicated than we would have liked.”

Prowl sighed, visibly chagrined. “At least I managed to talk them out of a temple, Primus help us all.”

“They’re gonna go all Chosen One at me again,” Rodimus said, “aren’t they? I can see it coming. I’m gonna walk out of here tomorrow and there’s gonna be a crowd of people waiting for me to faith-heal their collection of interface-borne viruses.”

“Rodimus, don’t be unkind,” Magnus murmured, and Rodimus looked away in mute apology.

“These are uncertain times,” Prowl said, laying his hand on Rodimus’s shoulder - Daniel stared at it, fascinated by the play of sparkmatter on metal. “And you are a very visible symbol of something sacred and eternal, something they may have needed more than they realized in these dark times. More importantly, you are the symbol of the end of the war and Iacon’s rebirth, which I assure you counts as a miracle.”

“It’s not _my_ miracle,” Rodimus protested, as Jazz quietly translated to Magnus and Daniel.

“Hmm. No, not exclusively. Perhaps that is what you should tell your well-wishers, when they inevitably seek you out.”

Rodimus tipped his head back, watching Prowl. The psychopomp was smiling, warmth behind the weariness and worry, and Rodimus remembered nights on Earth when Prowl was patient with his moments of anger or panic. “Yeah,” he allowed softly. “Maybe.”

*

“‘Chosen One’. Pah! I’ll show him ‘Chosen One’...”

Starscream stomped through the rubble on the outskirts of Iacon, what remained of the wreckage the combined rebuilding teams had cleared aside still waiting to be sorted for materials. He aimed a vicious kick at a loose piece of debris and, of course, swung straight through it without budging it an inch.

_"Fraggit!”_

Ignored by the Prime, then humiliated and _dismissed_ by that - that miserable Autobot lackey! Bad enough that he was dead, but now they had to add disrespect to the list?

“Sparks of his, pfeh,” Starscream muttered, glaring at nothing and everything as he vented. “‘Sparks of his’ indeed, like that dried-up softspark ever made anything of himself. I’ve made a hundred times more of my life than he ever did!”

He paused, a thoughtful and increasingly wicked gleam lighting his optics. “In fact...I’ve made a full _wing_ of my own! _Hah!_ "

*

“Okay. Shutter your optics.”

“I’m not sure I can do that, Jazz. My perceptions don’t work the same way-”

Jazz huffed at him. “C’mon, babe, work with me.”

Prowl gave him a helpless look. Jazz’s determination to teach him to compartmentalize seemed doomed from the start, but he’d been willing to play along anyway, because he trusted Jazz to know what he was talking about. And when it came to hacking your own mind, Jazz was the unquestioned expert! But when it came to existing in sparkmatter… well. Prowl was currently the only existing expert.

“I can’t turn off my perceptions, Jazz,” Prowl said patiently. “Even when I’m resting, I’m aware.”

Jazz frowned, mulling over that. “So when I’m in recharge, you’re just sitting there bored…?” He shook his head before Prowl could reply. “Later. Later, later, later. Hang on.”

He went to the wall and turned off the lights. Prowl’s native glow marked his presence out in the darkness, but didn’t extend much beyond that, leaving him cocooned in shadow. Jazz turned a smile on him before dimming the soft glow of his own visor.

“Be present in your body,” he intoned, and Prowl recognized the mantra of the fighting style Jazz used. “Feel yourself, from pedes to fingertips. Feel the weight of your existence.”

Prowl tried. He remembered what it felt like to be enframed, and he did his best to capture that feeling. He couldn’t recreate the subtle hum and hiss of an engine or internal servos, but he could remember the weight of armor, the flex of his wings, the coiled potential within him that was his altmode. In the dark, there was nothing to focus on but himself, and Jazz’s voice as he talked Prowl back into the land of the enframed.

A black hand, outlined in dim blue, reached out to him. Prowl reached back. Their fingertips met, and Prowl made himself think _this is right, this is normal and natural._ Jazz’s visor brightened in victory as their hands clasped. 

“There y’are,” he breathed softly, daring just a little more and pressing their hands palm to palm. The buzzing tingle was more bearable this time around, focussed, almost as though Prowl was creating a forcefield against Jazz’s hand from a battery of rays of light. _Light, hard light sculpture, projections-_

“Prowl,” he blurted, his own focus wobbling in his excitement. “Hey, Prowl, you’re a beacon. Right? The whole speech ‘bout bein’ a light in the dark, that a metaphor or bein’ literal?”

Prowl blinked at him and his form shimmered, distracted, then narrowed his optics with an effort and the hand against Jazz’s steadied and solidified again. _Just like pushing against a current._ “That depends rather on what spectrum-”

“Baby words!”

“...yes, it’s literal.”

“Babe, you’re a _light sculpture._ Y’could walk through a wall or stop a tank if y’wanted to, I’ll bet anything on it! I dunno how I didn’t think ‘bout this before, this is the greatest analogy ever.”

Prowl, meanwhile, was doing the worried scrunchy-opticed thing that meant he was thinking too hard - right up until he realised that Jazz had grabbed his hand in his excitement and hadn’t gone straight through. Glowing white optics stared at their joined hands as even Jazz paused to look, both of his wrapped around Prowl’s and squeezing without thinking; Prowl hesitated, then very carefully lifted his other hand and stroked Jazz’s cheek.

“Oh,” he breathed, a hint of a crackle in his voice. “Oh, love.” 

Jazz grinned at him, just a little unsteady and damp around the visor. “So, I’m callin’ this one a success.”

“Yes. Very much so.” And Prowl leaned up, not far at all, to brush a gentle, impossible kiss against Jazz’s lips. 

The timer dinged. “Oh, slag, the goodies,” Jazz muttered.

“You should go get them,” Prowl murmured against his chin.

“Maybe you should,” Jazz teased. “Practice doin’ solid-type things.”

“I’m not practicing carrying your merchandise, Jazz,” Prowl scolded gently. “I could ruin them if I drop them. Go get your goodies.”

“Aww.” Jazz poked him teasingly, delighted when his finger made contact, and went to fetch his latest batch of goodies. Halfway there, the lights came up again; Jazz glanced back, saw Prowl at the light switch, and beamed fit to outshine Earth’s sun.

“You could help me decorate these,” he offered as he pulled the tray out of the dryer. “C’mon, they’re just gonna be roll-ups. They’re completely mess-up proof.”

“You say that now,” Prowl muttered, but because he knew Jazz was right and he did need the practice, he joined Jazz at the counter where he did his decorating. “Are these for the storefront?” he asked, watching Jazz expertly cut the sheet of congealed energon into palm-sized squares.

“Nah, Sunset House asked for a double order of these for their next delivery,” Jazz answered. “Silver frosting or gold?”

“The silver’s been sitting out longer. Better use it up before it tarnishes.”

“Yeah, guess so.” Jazz reached for the canister. “They’ve probably gotten the news that I’m haunted by an Avatar of Primus, heh. Wonder what they make of it.”

Prowl groaned. “Jazz, don’t you start.” He accepted a spreading stick from Jazz’s hand and with infinite care scooped up some of the silver frosting. “Anyway, I’m sure they couldn’t care less as long as it doesn’t affect their business.” The frosting went over the goodie Jazz set in front of him; Prowl wasn’t about to try holding two things at once. “How much do you know about where they were before Sunset House? The stars and La Lune, I mean.”

Jazz chuckled. “None of them are keen to encourage those kindsa questions, babe,” he said. “I’ve never pried, though I know Polaris had some Towers connections he never cared to use. Why do you ask?”

Prowl thought back to Centauri’s untrained seer powers, La Lune’s chilling emptiness where a spark should be - _just like the Dinobots_ \- and the strange familiarity of Celesti’s spark. “While on the one hand, the workings of a person’s spark are private...on the other, there’s Starscream.” He sighed softly, then glowered at his hand as the stick he held began to sink through briefly not-entirely-there fingers before they solidified again. “I didn’t recognise it at the time, but after encountering them both I’m sure of it - Celesti has an overlay on his spark, like- like a two-tone colour on a paintjob, or a layer of oil on water. The signature matches Starscream’s spark. It may be nothing, but it concerns me.”

Jazz whistled softly, visor brightening in surprise. “Frag. Wonder if he knows.”

“I’ve learned that sparks are not something that people find easy to talk about,” Prowl said drily. “It may simply be an old indiscretion he doesn’t want to remember, though it doesn’t feel like any kind of bond I’ve encountered. His spark was his own when we met; he wasn’t possessed like Brightside, at least not then.”

“Didn’t ol’ Screamer say he _couldn’t_ get into the Well?” Jazz said slowly. “Not wouldn’t, couldn’t?”

“If he’s not lying. ...it’s possible that Celesti is some sort of unfinished business of his, and if anyone were contrary enough to try and go against the pull of the Well it would be Starscream - but no unaugmented spark should be that strong, not without foreknowledge of what they were getting themselves into.”

Jazz pulled a face, hands slowing over the goodie mix as he thought it over. “Trouble is, Lesti might not even know why Starscream’s still here,” he pointed out. “Maybe he’s got no clue he’s radiatin’ Eau de Slimeball an’ us askin’ him would probably go soarin’ right over Lune’s no-pesterin’ rule. That whole unwritten contract with the stars thing applies if all you’re doing is sittin’ watching Pol dance, y’know.”

“...is that what you used to visit for?” 

Prowl’s rather soft smile made Jazz wiggle where he stood. “Well, yeah. An’ I joined in now an’ again ‘cause he liked me.”

“I am not in the least bit surprised.” Prowl concentrated on spreading the silver mix, then stepped aside for Jazz to demonstrate how to roll the slips of goodie mix and icing and make them stick. He insisted that Prowl do several of his own, of course, and Prowl did his best - Jazz’s were rolled more quickly, but Prowl could proudly say his were just as neat.

“Perhaps I should go along when you visit the House,” he offered a little tentatively when they had finished, Jazz washing out the trays and utensils they had used and Prowl himself boxing up the goodies one at a time. “He may be more comfortable telling me something private than he would be another mech.”

Jazz considered it, tilting his head, going over what little he knew of the star - little enough, only his public persona, and unlike Pol Jazz had no idea how much of that was for show.

“Guess it can’t hurt too bad to try,” he said eventually. “Might even help Lesti keep his guard up in case Screamer does want somethin’ in the end.”

Prowl nodded. “I’ll speak with him, then. If you’ll introduce us.”

Jazz grinned, nudged his elbow. “Be proud to, babe.”

*

“I understand your… companion has business with me?”

Celesti wasn’t looking as uncomfortable as Lune had when Jazz made the request, but the Neutral had always been tricky to get a good read on. Jazz nodded and returned his smile. “It’s somethin’ of a delicate nature,” he said, “probably one of those things y’all don’t let guests pry about. I can leave the room if you want.”

Celesti’s optic ridges lifted. “One wonders how he came by such knowledge about me, if your respect of my boundaries still holds.”

“His senses are different from ours.” Jazz smiled apologetically. “You know I can keep a secret. I’ll even put this knowledge under encryption if you want. But it’s somethin’ you should be made aware of, for your own safety if nothing else.”

Celesti seemed to brace himself. “Very well. You may stay, Jazz - I apologize for insinuating you had been indiscreet. I know you can be trusted.”

“Heh. Naw, ‘s okay. You gotta look after you, no quibblin’ there.” Jazz glanced over to where Prowl hovered, looking far more anxious than Celesti ever had, and got a nod from his partner; he smiled again at the star and withdrew far enough to give the two some space.

Celesti’s expression as Prowl wavered into view barely flickered, though the sharp ridges of his helm lifted higher over his optics. “...well. I must say, that was less dramatic than I had been expecting.”

“I am more used to being entirely invisible and intangible,” Prowl replied quietly; Celesti sounded calm enough, but while the impression may well have fooled his clients, Prowl could see how his spark pulsed and whirled faster ready to run. “And I don’t want to alarm anyone by appearing out of nowhere. That was why I asked Jazz to make contact with you, rather than simply dropping the situation into your lap, so to speak.”

 

“Mmm. And while I appreciate the consideration on that front, why don’t you tell me exactly what it is you think I need to know? My time is valuable, gentlemechs, and I have several appointments to keep.”

“Very well. To be blunt, there are traces of Starscream’s spark energy overlaying your own, something between a solar flare and a layer of wax on plating. It seems to be a stable, if not entirely separate, layer of your own spark, and I am not trying to draw out details of anything you would prefer to keep private, but you should know that Starscream has appeared in Iacon as a wandering spark and managed to take control of another flier’s frame without their consent. He may have no idea of any of this, but given his previous actions-”

“...it would make sense if he tried to take advantage of that,” Celesti finished. His optics were a sickly pink and his wings had begun to flick and twitch at imagined ghostly fingers; his iron self-control may have been strained to breaking point, but he sank into one of the House’s chairs with grimly-deliberate grace and folded his pedes neatly. Jazz thought he recognised the motivation, if not the actions - clamping down on what a mech in an impossible situation _could_ control, instead of raging at what he couldn’t. It seemed to help, some of the colour returning to Celesti’s optics as he cycled fresh air through his intakes. “I see. ...Very well. What do you suggest?”

“Woah, just like that?” Jazz blurted. “No disbelief, no nothing?”

A trace of amusement returned to Celesti’s sharp face then, even as Prowl pulled a hint of his argh-Jazz-please-stop-now face. “While I may prefer to keep the circumstances private, as your partner says-” he nodded to Prowl, and the psychopomp gave him a faint smile in return, “That does _not_ mean I am...unaware of some consequences of sharing history with Starscream. The last thing I want is for that blithering windbag to try and boot me out of my own frame.” 

He smirked, then, and both ex-Autobots stilled at the resemblance - Celesti may have had his own colourscheme, and nobody had ever wanted to get close enough to the Command Trine to look for distinguishing facial features, but without that affected air of urbane foppishness and sarcasm he was only a repaint and an ID hack away from passing as the late, unlamented Air Commander.

“Besides,” Celesti continued. “I make a rather good living from impersonating him in the berth, and while I find that mockery enough on a general basis to recharge well at night, I certainly wouldn’t mind rubbing it in a little. No pun intended, of course.”

Jazz gaped. He didn’t currently have the wherewithal to glance at Prowl - he only would have seen the expression coined amongst the Autobots as ‘the Bluescreen of Death’ if he had. “Wha. Wuh? Wuh. .....you serious, mech? People _pay credits_ for _that?_ "

“Oh, really, darling.” Celesti waved away his incredulity, poise and composure returning by the moment. “Of _course_ they do. I should think myself lucky that I haven’t had to put a bucket on my head and pose as Megatron.”

“Well, consider my brain officially broken.” Jazz leaned back in his chair. “Anything else you wanna lay on me before we go? I gotta get back to the store and thinkin’ about anything other than Starscream impersonators in the berth.”

“He’s adorable when he’s flustered, isn’t he?” Celesti drawled knowingly to Prowl.

“I ain’t flustered! ...I just feel like I need a spin in the washracks.”

Prowl shook his head, a bit harder than he needed to for mere communication. “The solution to this threat is not as simple as awareness, I’m afraid,” he said, forging ahead determinedly. “I can throw Starscream out of someone’s body, but not prevent the possession in the first place. Or at least not yet.”

“Anything Lesti can do himself?” Jazz asked. “Anti-ghost meditation or whatsit?”

“...what?”

“I don’t think so,” Prowl admitted. “This is new territory for me. Most sparks never _wanted_ to possess anybody, even the ones who resisted returning to the Well.”

“Heh. Well, I’ll say this for Screamer, he’s always breakin’ the mold.” Jazz grinned wryly. “Too bad he’s gotta break everything else in the china shop along with it.”

“One day I will understand what you are on about, Jazz,” Celesti complained.

“Oh - heh. Sorry, Lesti. I guess I went a little more native on Earth than I thought.” Jazz rested his chin on his fist. “Well - I hate t’ say it, but we may be lookin’ at Prowl doin’ some bodyguardin’ ‘til we sort out some other kinda defense.”

“Absolutely not.” Celesti shook his head. “I have to _work_ tonight, Jazz. I can’t do so with someone hovering over my shoulder, invisible or not. No offence intended, darling,” he added.

“None taken.” Prowl thought. “I don’t need to be hovering over your shoulder. As long as I’m somewhere in the building, that should be sufficient. I can sense Starscream coming from a block away if he’s in a high emotional state, which he always is.” Jazz snorted, amused. “Would that be more acceptable to you?”

“I-” Celesti made a face, optics shuttering in distaste. “I don’t like the idea, but I know it’s better than the alternative. To protect Sunset House, I would do far worse.”

*

Prowl stayed when Jazz left, lingered in the antechamber of the House to watch him drive away and give Celesti his privacy as he prepared for the duty shift ahead. He stayed out there as Celesti went about doing whatever it was he did to get ready for an evening of being urbane, charming and very, very kinky by appointment only, and did his best not to think about ‘facing with Starscream. The voice alone...

In the meantime he watched the stars wheel across the sky trailing light and fire, and wondered briefly how Skyfire was. Poor spark.

Then his mind returned to Jazz’s not-quite-joke about anti-ghost meditation, and he began to wonder just what else he might be capable of. Given that the markings - faintly raised ridges and bumps that mapped out Praxus more and more clearly and accurately over time - had begun to spread from his doors and across his back... Maybe some self-reflection would be a productive way to pass the time after all. Jazz may be the foremost expert on compartmentalism, but Prowl had known Primus and something of his abilities the best. Perhaps he could work something out, with nothing else to focus on.

*

Once he arrived back in the Best Little Goodie Shop Jazz did his best to keep himself busy, admittedly with varying levels of success. While his new arrangement with Sunset House was his first and only contracted job, his first non-acquaintance customers come in just as he was considering retreating to the kitchen and Jazz gleefully threw himself into the role of salesmech-and-owner.

People trickled in and out of the shop throughout the fade of the cycle; a trio of workers wending their way back from the restoration projects - now finally moving out of Iacon’s centre and striking out for the edges of the city! - and looking for a pick-me-up or a treat made off with the last of his current batch of galaxy spirals. Jazz huffed warm air through his vents, leaned back against the counter and allowed himself a well-deserved punch at the ceiling.

“See?” he crowed to the empty air. “Ain’t nobody doesn’t want to stop in for a goodie.”

_"How very true!”_

Jazz spun on the spot, dropping into a crouch and reaching for a weapon he no longer carried; Starscream smirked, then tackled him in a rush of light.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Starscream goofs in so many ways, you'll find his picture in the dictionary next to 'oops.'

_"Worst - hostage - EVER!”_

Jazz cackled, even as the one hand that was still under his control gripped the light post with all the strength of a truly desperate mechanism. “Heh, thanks. Good to know I ain’t gone soft in my retirement.”

“Oh, shut up!” Starscream hauled at him - used his own body to haul at him, his legs and one arm numb and decidedly not under his control. “Typical Autobot. This would be so much easier if you’d - just - cooperate!”

He finally managed to pry Jazz off the light post, but he sent them both aft over wheels with the force of it. Jazz groped for something else to latch onto, but Starscream hauled his rattling chassis upright and marched him down the street. “You know,” Jazz commented, doing his best to impede his own progress, “I’ve heard people say they want my body, but this is ridiculous.”

Starscream snorted in his audial. “As if you would ever be my first choice, _ground-kisser._ If it wasn’t for your boyfriend and that big stick of his-”

Jazz giggled. “Hey, don’t knock the big stick. Prowl knows how t’ handle it.”

“That - oh, you’re disgusting!”

“Maybe if y’ ask nice, he’ll let you hold it?”

“Shut up!”

He/they were getting stared at. Good. Jazz blurted out at the nearest spectator, “Run to Sunset House, warn Cel-” before ghost-numbness seized his throat and he had to struggle to shake it off again. Being possessed _sucked exhaust._

“I said, shut up,” Starscream hissed. “Or I’ll throw you off the next bridge we come to.”

“You so much as scratch my paint and you don’t wanna know what Prowl’s gonna do,” Jazz warned.

Starscream smirked. “After tonight, I’ll no longer be in Prowl’s jurisdiction.”

Jazz’s internals ran cold.

*

Jazz felt it when they got close to Sunset House. There was something _there,_ a warmth his sensors wouldn’t register, a glow that didn’t reach his optics. It was probably thanks to Starscream’s presence messing with his sensors, or just the fact that a loose ghost was messing with him at all, but regardless of what Starscream thought of it Jazz felt the tiniest bit better despite himself. That not-feeling was _Prowl,_ he knew it like he knew his own designation. Jazz thought fast; if Starscream hadn’t had iron control over his comm the entire slagging time he would’ve called the House and told them to lock the doors and bar the windows, but as it was...

He couldn’t stop Starscream from walking forwards, but he could flail his one free arm like a maniac and flash every single light he had. Starscream squawked and clamped down on his light and sound show after a glorious split-blaring-second of Dragonforce, but he couldn’t keep up with all the flicker-flash-flare of headlights and indicators and visor _and and and_.

If that didn’t give off ‘something wrong’ in huge neon letters, then nothing else he could think of would.

Starscream snarled and dragged him along, but now Jazz was laughing, blaring music in crackling spurts whenever Starscream lost his grip trying to slap down another blinding burst of sidelights. He might not be able to wrench control back, but Jazz had spent most of the war going up against Soundwave - it was the little things that sometimes caused the most damage, and now Starscream didn’t have surprise on his side. And sure enough as they approached the House’s doors stood locked and bolted, even the outer ones that normally stayed propped open regardless of anything.

“Awww,” Jazz crooned. “Looks like they don’ wanna play, Screampuff.”

_"Shut-up-shut-up-shut-up!”_ Starscream howled, then there was the feeling of a surge like the entire planet had just rolled underneath him/them and all of a sudden the highest point of the wave-that-wasn’t became a point of light. Radiating light, _pouring_ light, so much that it was almost something tangible Jazz could reach out and touch, and as he gaped more and more and _more_ light blazed upwards and outwards until a small sun in the vague shape of a Praxian rose from the metal.

Prowl looked _pissed._

He also didn’t stop to negotiate, or demand that Starscream let Jazz go. He burned up from the skin of Cybertron, set one pede on the ground and _launched,_ face set and marked with glyphs that burned blue, lightning pouring from the corners of his optics, the circular mark set into his chest a small star; Praxus was marked into his doorwings, the recovered streets of Iacon growing up in relief out from his spark, Kaon rumbling down his back, the broken spires of Vos crowning his chevron. Light surrounded him, light poured from him in golden streamers, light blazed from what now looked less like a staff and more like an immense hammer, dazzling Jazz and sending his spark racing. He felt Starscream jerk, felt his own pedes scuffling backwards as Starscream readied to run, and Jazz grinned fierce and feral as Prowl swung.

Starscream let Jazz go a split second before the hit connected. Jazz arched and almost fell, a wash of sheer power burning right through him from plating to core, golden light blazing from his visor and for that brief, brief instant he could see everything...

Then his joints gave way, and the world went dark.

*

“Oh, what a shame,” Starscream taunted from midair. “Is there a word for ‘friendly fire’ in Primal Vernacular?”

Prowl paused by Jazz’s side. Jazz was unconscious but unharmed, vents cycling softly, sidelights giving out a soft glow. Satisfied, Prowl nodded and turned his attention fully back on Starscream, still lounging in midair and laughing.

_"I gave you fair warning, Wanderer,”_ he said, and pushed off into the air after him.

Starscream clearly had his own expectations to unlearn: his optics widened as Prowl flew after him, as fast and skillful as if he were on repulsors. His hammer hummed through the air as he swung it, sending out a shockwave that knocked Starscream off balance. Starscream scrabbled for purchase, for distance, his face twisting in rage and frustration, and flung curses at Prowl that had no translation into Standard.

“You should have just stayed dead!” he snarled.

_"You should have left these sparks of Primus alone,”_ Prowl answered.

Starscream let out a wordless shout of rage and lunged at him, grasping the shaft of Prowl’s hammer. Gold light erupted between them, lighting the whole street as brightly as a sun.

*

“Wow. Hell of a light show out there.”

Behind the safety of a security feed, Centauri was very nearly calm. It probably helped that Polaris was cuddled in his lap and Sirius was leaning against his shoulders, but if they weren’t going to bring that up then he wouldn’t either.

“Is Jazz okay?” Polaris wiggled, trying to move the screen as if that would make the angle of the camera move. “I can’t tell.”

“I’m sure Prowl wouldn’t let him lie there if he wasn’t all right,” Sirius assured him, reaching for a hand to squeeze. “He’d have called for help.”

“How? He hasn’t got a comm.”

“Hey,” Centauri blurted, “where’s Celesti?”

*

Prowl let go of the staff.

Starscream stared in blank astonishment for a single beat, then lunged backwards with a crow of triumph - which soared into a shriek of fury when the staff quietly and simply dissolved into motes of light in his grasp.

“ _No!”_

_“Yes,”_ Prowl told him flatly, then punched him in the face.

Below them, as Starscream screeched in combined shock and indignation, the House’s main doors opened and Celesti jetted out on silent antigravs towards the fallen Autobot.

“Really now,” he muttered, landing on one knee and gathering Jazz up into his arms. “This is hardly the time for beauty sleep, darling, Prowl will be terribly disappointed you’re missing all this-”

There was yet another piercing cry from above and Celesti grimaced, arms tightening around Jazz and kicking off into the air, skimming the rubble-strewn ground and arrowing back towards the doors. Starscream dropped, stooping like a falcon and aiming straight for him with Prowl barely a second behind; they might be able to pass through solid metal but Lesti had the head start, blasting past the doors and corkscrewing through the halls as the House’s metal skin shrieked under the strain of his passing.

With a mental apology Celesti twisted in the air and sent Jazz’s limp frame skimming into a side passage; he’d owe the mech a buffing session after this, but Jazz knew the House well enough to find his way through to the shouting when he woke up. In the meantime Celesti had lost speed and there were places he needed to be; Starscream was homing in on the feel of his spark, as much as it made him want to try and scrub the very thought away in the washracks, and Celesti threw himself once more into the chase. He barrelled into the main hall and cut his speed, dropping down with a touch less than his usual grace to the floor and waited, tense as a strung wire. It didn’t take long.

With a wordless yell of triumph, Starscream shot through the ceiling and aimed straight for him. Celesti’s optics narrowed; he braced his pedes and his hands curled into fists, for a moment feeling the weight of long-ago mounted weaponry. Then Starscream crashed into him with all the fury of a falling star, and Celesti burned.

Prowl arrived as the Seeker’s frame stiffened, joints locking up; in the brief moment of disorientation he/they hadn’t the wherewithal to react as heavy-duty loader arms deployed from the hall’s walls and snatched Celesti’s shell up tight. They wound around his legs, bound his arms and weighed him down with the speed and skill of a mech built with them installed. 

(Optics pale and hard, dataports plugged into one of the discreet panels scattered throughout the House, La Lune let his mobile frame fade back into the shadows as his consciousness moved into the House’s superstructure and _held on tight._ )

Celesti’s frame shuddered, hard, and the loader arms tightened; neither Prowl nor his silent audience were surprised when he raised his head wearing Starscream’s triumphant grin.

“Well,” he drawled. “Isn’t this _nice._ "

Prowl didn’t answer, only watched with pale, steady optics. Instead of quelling him that only made Starscream laugh, ringing harsh and brazen through the hall. “Nothing to say, _guardian?_ I’m sure your little friend is _terribly_ disappointed. You’ve failed him in such dramatic style, after all! Not to mention his little sparkless _drone_ of a commander, or - ooh, isn’t this interesting. Should I say _boyfriend?”_

The psychopomp didn’t reply, but before Starscream could taunt him again his vocaliser choked.

“On the contrary,” Celesti snarled through gritted teeth. “The only one who’s going to be disappointed here is you.”

“...oh, please. Your spark is _mine!_ " Starscream snapped back, his/their wings trembling as he wove into the solar flares of his own spark on Celesti’s and pushed, trying to smother Celesti’s spark in his chamber, forcing more of himself into the cramped space until their joint body jerked and thrashed in phantom pain. Only when the loader arms smothered the involuntary movements in turn did Starscream let out a shriek of frustration, his/their optics blank and unseeing as Celesti’s face contorted. “Why won’t you _extinguish,_ you worthless _clone!”_

_Because that’s the trouble with creating clones, you blithering, short-sighted imbecile._ Celesti’s voice seemed to come from somewhere deep within, Starscream’s attention forced into the sparkchamber that was suppose to be his, was supposed to hold the inferior spark budded from his _still_ so that he could crush it against the wall that was supposed to protect it. _You only wanted a production line of soldiers. Instead you got people, and people tend to take on a life of their own - the overlay of your spark might be your anchor in my frame, but it’s also my spark’s_ shield, _you idiot! And the one single thing I learned from you, originator, was how to be a rubber ball under the heel of the universe. For as long as you’re linked to me you can never crush me, and if I go to the Well I WILL TAKE YOU WITH ME!_

Fury raged up from the spark underneath/alongside/glued to his, fury and the damning sense of kin, and Starscream screamed in shock and pain as the layer of his own signature he’d gobbled up as part of his own spark sent the scalding rage and disdain lashing into him.

_You can’t do this!_

_Oh, I can. For all of us that you sent out to die, for the millions of years of trying to learn how to live, I most CERTAINLY can!_

Starscream shrieked again, this time struggling to pull away, but the layer of _him_ that had bonded back into his spark was still part of Celesti, and the other Seeker’s precise rage flayed away his control. In sheer pained desperation he ripped himself away from the spark he had seeded, taking some of that overlay with him; Starscream ripped himself out of the other Seeker’s frame, and barely had enough time to panic before Prowl’s hammer slammed him into the floor.

Prowl knelt, peeled the dazed spark from the underside of his spectral hammer and folded it into his palm, then politely pretended not to pay attention as La Lune let his loader arms loosen so Celesti could half fall, half throw himself into Lune’s mobile frame’s embrace.

“Prowl, sir?” Sirius’s voice from down the hallway, cautious and tentative. “Is it over?”

Prowl straightened. “It’s over. ...Oh, Jazz.”

The other three stars emerged into the light, Centauri holding Jazz in his arms; the ex-saboteur was starting to stir even as Prowl went to him. “...s’ one slag of a hangover,” he mumbled, and Centauri snickered.

“Yeah, well, we always warn our guests the drinks here pack a punch.”

“I got no complaints.” Jazz grinned broadly and wiggled out of Centauri’s arms, though he let Centauri and Sirius keep him steady. “Hey, Prowler. Nice job.”

“Celesti did the hard part,” Prowl demurred, glancing down at the slightly flattened, resentfully pulsing disc of light in his hand that was Starscream’s current state. “I just made sure it stuck. Are you all right?”

Jazz frowned. “Yeah. Honestly, it didn’t even hurt. I feel like I’m comin’ down from a hell of a nice night, though.” He grinned lasciviously; Tauri wolf-whistled. 

Prowl felt his doors flutter in embarrassment. “Jazz, _really._ "

“No shame, babe.” Jazz peered at him. “I’m diggin’ the new look, by the way. Is that Iacon?”

Prowl looked down - and yes, that was Iacon outlined in deep blue light on his plating, _new_ Iacon, shattered but healing, its six bridges reaching out to other city-states whose topography was marked all over his body. “...well,” was all he could think to say.

Jazz put out his hand, tracing the streets marked and slightly raised on Prowl’s chest. “You sure you’re not an Avatar, Prowler?”

“I…” Prowl covered Jazz’s hand with his own. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen markings like this before.”

Polaris peered around Prowl’s arm, smiled mistily at what he saw, and tugged at Jazz’s arm. “You can talk philosophy all you want in the washrack. Your poor paint! And look, your leg is all dented up.”

“Hm?” Jazz glanced down, bending the leg in question. “Ah, I’ve had worse. How’d that happen?”

Polaris glanced at Sirius and Centauri, hesitating; Tauri started to snicker. “Lesti kinda - slid you down the hallway when he came charging in.”

“...are you tellin’ me Lesti used me as a hockey puck?” Jazz demanded, torn between amusement and affront.

“...a what?”

“...never mind.”

“More like a frisbee, but we can check the security cameras later if you really want to,” Prowl said with a faint smile. He made vague ushering motions at the others, though given how Sirius had glanced casually past him and then done a rather impressive doubletake over Prowl’s head, it was too late to distract them from Celesti and Lune.

“Uh.” A soft, slightly unsteady smile bloomed, lighting Sirius’ optics. “Sure, no problem. How about those washracks for now, though? We can fix Jazz’s paint no problem.”

Pol glanced up at him in consternation. “But what about-” He glanced around Prowl and his own optics widened. “Oh... Oh my goodness. _Yes._ Washracks, of course!” Judging by how his hands clasped and his optics lit like twin stars, the sight of Celesti cuddling into Lune’s arms and kissing the other mech _very thoroughly_ was a long, long-awaited one. 

The stars made a graceful retreat back down the hallway, Centauri blissfully oblivious and pestering Jazz to explain what the frag a hockey puck was; Prowl waited patiently until they were out of hearing range before drifting softly over to the pair in the hall.

Despite being intently focussed on La Lune, Celesti still managed to turn and meet Prowl’s gaze before he came too close to them. “Thank you,” he said bluntly. “I’ve wanted to hit that mech with something heavy for a very long time, so everything else aside, this has all been rather cathartic.”

Prowl’s optic ridges rose despite himself. “...you’re welcome. And thank you for getting Jazz somewhere safe, come to that.”

The Seeker waved his thanks away; the gesture was weak and shaky, much like Lesti himself, but if La Lune were willing to let Celesti up from his lap and make him walk anywhere, Prowl would believe it only when he saw it. “Cold as it may sound, he made a very plausible alibi for me to be out of the House.”

There was a brief, faintly awkward pause.

“I won’t tell Jazz what you told me,” Prowl said, softer this time. “And so far as I can tell, your spark is already beginning to recover from Starscream’s mistreatment. If you did need to see a medic over it, I doubt the alternate signature would be picked up by anything other than the most advanced scanners.”

Celesti inclined his head, hesitated briefly and then seemed to decide the rest of the planet could sit and swivel, resting his helm against La Lune’s shoulder with every evidence of satisfaction. Lune in turn said not one word out loud, but his long fingers wound so very tenderly with Celesti’s it made Prowl’s own sparkmatter catch.

“We both appreciate your discretion,” Lune said, and Prowl didn’t miss the way he looked at Celesti or the tiny squeeze of their entwined hands. “Things have been - difficult - for both of us in our respective fashions. The House values privacy.”

Prowl thought of Lune’s expression as Starscream had laughed, wearing Celesti’s body like an old cloak. He thought of the House itself holding Celesti upright, loader arms not made for the task inescapably gentle as Lune’s mobile form ran to him. He thought of the Dinobots, how hard it had been for everyone to see them as _people_ despite all the evidence, despite the outright miracle of their sentience without sparks of their own. He wondered briefly how it had happened for Lune, then firmly dismissed the thought as _none of his business._

“Anything that passed in this House stays within these walls.” He bowed to them both, inclining his head, the broken spires of Vos a glitter of star-lit sparkmatter over his helm. “And - congratulations, both of you.”

Celesti laughed aloud, his scarlet optics, for once, openly soft and fond as La Lune drew him close. “Well, after millions of years dancing around each other, it took us long enough!”

*

_"Where have you taken me?”_ Starscream demanded.

And he knew Prowl could hear him, despite the encasing metal all around him: the only thing that could contain a free spark, the tank of a sparkeater. Which Prowl had just gone and _freshly harvested,_ with Starscream in tow, just to prove a point. _How nice of him to go to all that trouble._

Well, Starscream wasn’t going to lose sleep over there being one less sparkeater in existence. He wasn’t _that_ monstrous. But the ease with which Prowl had eviscerated the thing would haunt the rest of his existence.

_"Home, naturally.”_

_“Home?”_

For a horrible moment Starscream thought Prowl meant the Well, and the absurdly powerful ex-Autobot psychopomp (unfair, it was just _so unfair_ he got to be that powerful when he hadn’t even sought it) had found a way to drag him to the afterlife to be - whatever it was the Well did to sparks like him after all. He was surprised by a rush of relief when Prowl answered, _"In the shadows of the spires of Vos.”_

Starscream waited for an explanation. When Prowl didn’t offer one, he gave off the impression of an impatient sigh. _"Very well, I’ll bite. Why are we in Vos? Not for the view.”_

_“No.”_ Prowl had the nerve to sound regretful - as if _he_ could ever feel the loss of Starscream’s home city. _"It is broken. Abandoned. Even if enough Vosians return to rebuild this place, it will never be what it was.”_

He set the sparkeater-tank down and moved away, and Starscream nearly bashed himself against the wall of the vessel. _"Where are you going? You’re not just going to leave me here?”_

_“In my judgement, it is a fair punishment for what you did today.”_ Oh, the cold, unfeeling _steel_ in that voice, Starscream could almost admire Prowl’s cruelty. _"You may remain here, amid the desolation of your city, and contemplate the choices that led you here. Alone. Nothing to distract you from your own thoughts.”_

There was more than just cruelty there, Starscream realized, even as he hammered at his prison again. Where Prowl was, was the place mechs went to when anger and fear were no longer enough. People in that place were capable of some truly _breathtaking_ things. Moving-the-cosmos type things.

_And of course he understands what losing your city feels like, you ninny. He’s a motherboardslagging_ Praxian.

Starscream had all but forgotten about Praxus. Didn’t like thinking about it, really.

Prowl was turning to step away, and Starscream swallowed his pride for the second time in this being’s presence. _"Wait!”_

Prowl paused, but didn’t turn back to him. _"Give me one reason to reconsider.”_

...ugh. Pride tasted awful and went down even worse. _"Bring me to Rodimus. Let my case be heard before the Prime. …...please.”_

*

He had little enough reason to do it, but Prowl took Starscream to the Prime.

He likely could have reached Rodimus without needing a comm. It would take some thinking about, when he had a moment, but Prowl was almost sure that he could. All sparks were connected, after all, one way or another - all he needed to do was reach.

No wonder Primus had gone willingly into the Well with his brother. How had he been able to stand drifting for so long, barely aware, after _this?_

Iacon glittered in his sight, a latticework of stars moving and working and loving and arguing and beautiful and _alive._ There were more somewhere - colonies, ships, scattered handfuls of Cybertronians wandering the galaxy just on the edge of sight, a sweet tangle of chimes on the edge of his hearing, out of reach. All of them imperfect, all of them struggling. All of them part of the constellation slowly growing bright again, and he loved every single spark of light with such intensity it almost hurt, making his plating change and reform, making him learn to become something new. 

Primus knew. Prowl understood it with a certainty he hadn’t had before, when Primus had sent that signal flare of love curling around and through his one last helper - Primus had known exactly what he was doing, leaving the small flame of His power with Prowl where it had stayed safe all those millennia Prowl had done his duty. _Just in case._

Prowl was no god, no stand-in for Primus as He recovered from His long hurts and isolation in the Well. All he was, all he ever had been, was a guide and a guardian - now, though, he had a wider range and arsenal to do his job.

_Consider it an upgrade,_ he thought to himself, and smiled faintly as he made his way to Iacon.

*

Bringing Starscream to the Underdark had been a calculated risk. A calculated risk of utter darkness, of things that moaned and rasped and slunk in the black, of all the nightmares passed on to sparklings to terrify them into good behaviour. Perhaps Prowl didn’t quite have it in his makeup to love every single spark just yet; perhaps he was more a proponent of tough love than Primus had ever been, but he didn’t immediately reassure Starscream just what they were doing there when the spark in his fist had begun to quake.

Maybe he should start working down there, too, when he could.

Either way, Starscream’s jury-rigged cell was holding perfectly, though Rodimus’ reaction to Prowl walking through the wall had been...alarmed, to say the least. At least the light he gave off was a little dimmer now.

“I apologise for the interruption, Rodimus,” he said when Roddy had pulled his composure back together somewhat.

“Prowl,” Rodimus greeted unsteadily. “What’s with the new look?”

“A rather unexpected upgrade,” Prowl answered with a self-effacing shrug. “Primus is generous with His gifts, as weighted with responsibility as they are.”

“...yeah, I can relate.” Rodimus gave Prowl a half-smile, wry and weary, somehow making him look older than he already did. Prowl returned the smile, suddenly intensely grateful for his presence and friendship. “So what brings you here? Another religious movement in Iacon?”

“Fortunately, no. I’m here because of him.” Prowl upended the sparkeater’s tank; Starscream spilled out in a flash of light and a squawk of protest.

“Oh, Primus, what did you do,” Rodimus groaned.

“Everyone’s fine,” Prowl was quick to jump in before Starscream could do more than open his mouth. “Celesti of Sunset House is uninjured and Jazz sustained only minor dents. He was fast asleep in the tub when I left him.”

Rodimus stared at Prowl, trying to unravel that, then directed his optics again toward Starscream. “I repeat,” he said, in the flat tone of a mechanism who had far too much to do already and did NOT have time to deal with disciplinary issues and fractious dead guys on top of that. “What. Did you. Do.”

Starscream crossed his arms. “You can hardly blame me for wanting a body. And there was one walking around, just my size and everything!”

“With a spark already occupying it,” Prowl put in dryly.

“That spark was a clone. A clone _I seeded._ ”

Rodimus frowned. “You tried to possess your clone?”

“I’m afraid,” Prowl said heavily, “it’s a bit more serious than that. Starscream tried to murder his clone.”

Rodimus turned his optics to Starscream, bright and pale. “Starscream. You swore to me.”

“More fool you for believing me, isn’t that what your bore of a Second keeps saying?” Starscream hissed. “You haven’t been much help, you know!”

“Shut up,” the Prime snapped, not loudly but with such vehemence that Starscream actually jerked back. “Seriously. I have a planet to rebuild after _you_ helped tear it to pieces, I don’t have the luxury of dropping everything to work on your problem. And I swear, the _only_ thing keeping me from going Wrath of Primus on your aft is the fact that _Prowl stopped you._ You had better thank him for that.”

_“Thank_ him,” Starscream repeated incredulously, still struggling to hold onto his defiance in the face of the Prime’s anger. “Of course. After dragging me into the Underdark, and threatening to imprison me in Vos - oh, but he was only doing his _job_. Protecting the - what was the phrase you used, Prowl?” Starscream rolled insolent optics Prowl’s way. “The ‘sparks Primus loves’? Doing everything you could to rub my face in the fact that I am uniquely excluded from that category.”

Starscream’s tone was so acid that Prowl couldn’t tell if this was some sort of tactic or genuine self-pity. Regardless, it had an effect on Rodimus, no matter how the young Prime struggled to hide it.

“You seem to be doing your best to exclude yourself from being loved by anyone,” he said quietly, meeting Starscream’s furious glare with a calm look of his own. “And leaving you in Vos was not a threat.”

The Seeker huffed, seemingly trying to intimidate Prowl so he wouldn’t have to look at Rodimus. “Oh _really._ ”

“Yes. If Rodimus decides to pass this particular disciplinary issue to me, I will put your containment unit back where I told you I would the first time.”

Starscream choked. “ _What?!_ ”

“Either you never knew, or you may have forgotten - I was the disciplinarian for the Autobot army, when I was still serving. I have no qualms whatsoever over taking up that role one more time for something that is still within my jurisdiction, if the Prime so decides.”

“And don’t think I’m not tempted,” Rodimus put in. “I know you’ve suffered, but we’ve all suffered. You had a choice whether or not to add to the suffering of this clone of yours-”

“Celesti,” Prowl supplied at the Prime’s querying glance.

Rodimus nodded. “And let’s face it, being your clone means he’s suffered enough.”

“Oh, yes, thank you, very nice!”

Rodimus grinned roguishly - _couldn’t resist that little dig, could you?_ Prowl thought, amused. “So,” the Prime pressed, “you don’t deny the charges against you.”

Starscream shrugged. “There would be no point.”

“Nothing to say for yourself?”

“Again - no point.”

Rodimus sighed in frustration and leaned his elbows on his desk. “Starscream, I’m asking you. Give me _something._ I went to bat for you versus Magnus because I thought you were worth it - and I still believe that even if nobody else does. Even if Primus himself doesn’t.” Prowl wisely refrained from commenting on that: it had its desired effect on Starscream, at any rate, the ex-Seeker’s shoulders stiffening as his gaze lowered. “You didn’t prove me right today, but you can still come back from this. I’m _listening,_ Starscream.”

Starscream didn’t look up, nor did he speak, a display so uncharacteristic of him that Prowl found himself wondering if he’d really brought home the right wandering spark. Rodimus let the silence stretch, then leaned back with another weary sigh. “Go back into that thing Prowl had you in,” he pronounced. “I won’t pronounce any sentences right now while I’m still angry - anyway, I still have to talk to your victims. But you’ll stay with me.”

“As you wish, Prime,” Starscream muttered, resentment mingling with defeat. He didn’t struggle as Prowl scooped him into his vessel again.

“What is that, by the way?” Rodimus asked as Prowl set the vessel on his desk.

“A sparkeater’s digestion tank.”

The Prime’s optics widened. “Prowl. You are the most terrifying and badass being in all the universe, and I am so glad you’re on my side.”

At that, Prowl allowed a smile. “As you should be.”

*

Terrifying and badass he may have been, but Prowl still wasn’t ready to carry Jazz through the streets of Iacon in all his shiny glory, as Centauri had put it. Or to carry him through the streets of Iacon whilst he was invisible and Jazz wasn’t. Jazz had been soundly, deeply in recharge in the House’s newly-reactivated oil bath when Prowl came to find him after speaking to Celesti and La Lune; he simply hadn’t had the spark to wake him, and Pol swore faithfully that they would make sure Jazz was taken care of. 

Prowl may have added a caveat that if Jazz tried to come after him, someone would sit on him. Sirius had had to muffle a laugh at that, but also looked like he entirely understood.

He hadn’t wanted to impose on the House any longer than he had to, especially after his business with Starscream - and then Rodimus - had taken more time than he had ever anticipated; on the other hand, he had passed on the House’s details for the Prime to follow up on. Prowl really rather hoped that Rodimus went there himself. Primus knows Optimus had needed time spent solely on pleasure, whether that was of the interfacing kind or playing Drunk Dungeons and Dragons with the officers.

Sirius was both very kind and very competent, however, which meant that as well as having organised the immediate and efficient evacuation of the House’s customers _without a riot_ the moment a possessed Jazz had appeared in the distance, he also managed to find a friend with a small trailer who was willing to give an unconscious mech and a faintly glowy funny-looking one a ride home.

Prowl thanked the mech quietly, carried Jazz over the threshold of the Best Little Goodie Shop and somehow managed to re-engage the locks _without_ dropping his partner along the way. He continued to manage not dropping Jazz all the way up the stairs, though he did have a nasty moment when he bumped Jazz’s pede against the doorway and almost fell back down said stairs again.

Eventually, though, he laid Jazz down on their berth and just - looked at him, for a moment, feeling as though his spark could power Cybertron with so much love. Then, very quietly and very carefully, he lay down next to Jazz, wrapped an arm over Jazz’s midsection, and nuzzled in close to _not let go_ for a good long while.

*

Jazz awoke to a faint shout from outside. He hummed, stretched, and wiggled out of Prowl’s arms (he was staying solid even in his rest state, Jazz was _so proud_ ) to peer out the window.

A youngling peered back at him, all wide optics and gangly limbs. “ ‘Lo. Are you open?”

“Can be, for an adorable bit like you,” Jazz grinned, and the youngling made a show of looking around to see who he was talking about. _Awwwww._

After unlocking the Best Little Goodie Shop, selling the youngling his preferred treats, and sneaking a discount in there, Jazz went back upstairs to find Prowl awake and calmly puttering about. “Hey, there’s my hero,” he grinned.

“Jazz.” Prowl went to him, arms out; Jazz happily snuggled into his partner’s embrace. “How are you feeling?”

“Just fine.” Jazz purred, tilting his head up to nudge under Prowl’s jaw. “Better than fine. I still feel a little fizzy from that hammer last night.”

Prowl winced. “I’m sorry for hitting you with my hammer.”

“Pff. Better than puttin’ up with Screamer. What happened to him, anyway?”

“I put him in a jar and gave him to Rodimus.”

Jazz snickered. “Aww, how nice. You know he’s gonna send us a thank-you present. Maybe a bomb.”

“Yes, he’s a very well-mannered youngling like that.”

Jazz chuckled, laying his head on Prowl’s shoulder, feeling the Primus-touched sparkmatter hum underneath him as Prowl stroked his helm. “So glad you’re here,” he sighed. “Mind if I get a lil clingy today?”

“Love,” Prowl whispered, tracing his lips over Jazz’s helm, “you are only the second clingiest person in this relationship today.”

Jazz hummed his contentment, then made an executive decision and nudged Prowl again until he started backing up, Jazz crowding right after him so they never quite stopped touching each other. “C’mon, babe, berth. We’re stayin’ closed today.”

“All right.” Prowl’s voice was little more than a sigh, soft and quiet against Jazz’s audial. “Whatever you want.”

“Heh, now that’s what I like t’hear.” He shooed Prowl back up onto the berth and cuddled up right behind him, fitting together with the ease of long, long practise until he could rest his head on Prowl’s bumper and trace the pattern of Iacon’s streets on Prowl’s plating. They lay quietly for a few moments, Prowl’s white optics hazy and content, until Jazz let out a snort of a laugh.

“What?” Prowl murmured, a smile tugging at his mouth already.

“Just,” Jazz snickered. “Just nice t’know we ain’t gonna need a map any time soon.”

“Hmph.” Prowl frowned at him, but Jazz wasn’t fooled and grinned at him shamelessly until Prowl smiled again. “It’s nice to know I have something useful to contribute.”

“Yeah, ‘cause bein’ a kickaft Ghostbuster ain’t contributin’ at all,” Jazz drawled, poking Prowl gently between the optics. “Or helping with the goodie-makin’. Or-”

“Shush, Jazz.” Prowl settled back contentedly, Jazz chuckling in his arms and all well with the world. Idle fingertips traced over Jazz’s helm, and after a moment Jazz stroked his thumb over the raised relief of Iacon on his chest.

“Hey, Prowler?” he murmured.

“Mmm?”

“Know what I regret?”

Prowl tilted his helm. “What?”

Jazz was still stroking Prowl’s chestplate; there was a faint smile on his face. “We never bonded.”

Prowl paused, feeling like his spark was turning over in his chest, never mind that he was _all_ spark. “We agreed it was inopportune during a war.”

“I know. We weren’t wrong.” Jazz looked up then. “But when I heard you were gone, all I could think of was _I wish we’d bonded, he’d be right here already.”_ A faint smile passed over his face. “Even knowing what I knew, it was like the bottom dropped outta my world.”

“I’m s-” Prowl stopped when Jazz put a finger on his lips.

“Just a thought,” Jazz said with a crooked smile, and re-settled himself in Prowl’s arms.

_Just a thought,_ Jazz said, and Prowl did think, turning the idea over and over in his mind more than once even as his sparkmatter thrummed with impatience. His spark knew what he wanted most - what he _needed_ most. Who he had always needed most.

“We could try, if you wanted to,” he said.

Jazz stilled in his arms, his systems stalling out as quiet as an agent on a Spec Ops mission. “...you serious?”

“There’s no war now. Certainly no planet-spanning violence, and neither of us are officers who would cripple the Autobots if either of us were lost or compromised.” Prowl hesitated, one last secret shame burning out over his glossa. “...I was afraid to try anything like spark-play in case you found out what I was. That, and I’d never done it before. I wasn’t sure how much exposure would be enough for you to work out I wasn’t what you were used to.”

He wasn’t comfortable meeting Jazz’s visor, but he certainly wasn’t expecting Jazz’s arms to tighten around him in a fierce hug.

“Well, we got plenty of time now,” Jazz declared, seeing as always to what Prowl hadn’t said - _I wanted to, but I was afraid._ He grinned and Prowl’s spark lit brighter, his partner bold and fearless in his arms and _wanting_ him still. “Only one way to find out, babe.”

“Yes,” Prowl said, and it was relief and joy and a release of pressure all at once. He reached to stroke Jazz’s cheek, over his helm and up to one of Jazz’s always-tempting sensor horns. Jazz hummed and squirmed against him, offering his helm for more of the gentle touches.

“Feels tingly all over,” he grinned, wriggling a little.

“Tell me if it’s too much,” Prowl offered, and stroked again. Jazz gave a little head-toss into Prowl’s hand, a soft, sharp cry escaping him. “I haven’t done this in a while, remember.”

“Heh. You ain’t lost the knack.” Jazz propped himself up on his elbow. “C’mere, babe. There’s something else we ain’t done in a while.”

Prowl understood what he meant immediately, and sat up to meet Jazz halfway; kissing as a disenframed psychopomp was as easy as kissing as an enframed one, with all his focus trained on Jazz’s mouth on his. Prowl wrapped his arms around Jazz’s back and gratefully, eagerly lost himself in it.

_I missed this so much,_ he half-thought, half-said, and was only distantly surprised when Jazz broke the kiss to stare.

“How’d you-? ...didja do that on purpose or’m I hearing things?”

“Not on purpose, but the only thing you were hearing was me. My spark to your spark, and while I have always admired your curiousity I have really, truly missed kissing you and I want to keep doing it.”

Jazz was still laughing when Prowl gave up and began scattering kisses over his face, his giggles turning to gasps when Prowl moved from dotting kisses over his cheeks and nose to wrap his glossa around an audial horn. Jazz squirmed and clung to him, shuddering faintly, and his vents clicked on when Prowl thought/spoke of the things he wanted to do with his lover, things he’d missed like an ache or things he’d always wanted to try.

“Anything you want,” Jazz gasped out, fingers digging into the Kaon marks on Prowl’s back. “Primus, y’ don’t even know, Prowler, y’ don’t know how much I want your touch on every inch of me.”

_I think I have some idea._

Struck by inspiration, Prowl pressed Jazz’s shoulder until he got the hint and rolled onto his back. Prowl straddled him, took up his hands and kissed them before leaning down to claim his mouth again. Their bumpers, rather than shifting one on top of the other like they usually did, shared space, Prowl employing a kind of selective solidity just to see if he could. The answer was satisfying: Jazz arched under him, crying out into Prowl’s kisses as his beloved’s sparkmatter engulfed his entire chest, including his spark chamber with its wildly pulsing spark.

“Am I gonna-” he gasped out between kisses. “-Not have t’ - oh Primus, Prowler - open my chestplates for you?”

Prowl hummed against his mouth. “It’d be a shame if you didn’t, Jazz. I want to see your beautiful spark opened for me.”

Jazz’s chestplates snapped open almost before he could finish speaking, the glow of his spark dancing and reaching already for the sparkmatter surrounding it, and Prowl’s gasp turned into a moan as he shuddered. Jazz’s spark drew on him, a dozen tiny tendrils of light tugging him closer like Danny’s tiny sparkling hands had clung to their plating and just as entreating. _Please? Please come here? Please?_

“Oh love,” he gasped, optics flaring with sparks of brilliant light. “Oh, my love.”

Jazz was beyond coherent speech, his spark cradled in the warmth of the one he wanted and beseeching in every way that mattered, but his hands still slid up Prowl’s arms and tugged impatiently until Prowl followed him back down again.

Neither had ever touched another’s spark before, but it hardly seemed to matter: they knew each other so well already that their merge fell effortlessly into place. Jazz’s fingertips hooked around Prowl’s arms; Prowl’s voice hummed through Jazz until he arched with the threads of reverberating charge, and with their spark-threads clasped Prowl shuddered with him. _Beautiful,_ he told his lover, _beautiful-beloved-mine,_ and Jazz’s voice echoed from deep in his core in wordless agreement.

As lost in pleasure as he was, Jazz was the first to notice it: the golden glow that had been his sense of his partner had spread. “H-hey,” he managed, spreading a hand and holding it up for Prowl to see. “Think this means we’re doin’ it right.”

“Jazz,” Prowl murmured, taking in the light shining from his lover’s frame. “I don’t - I didn’t realize this would happen.”

“How many psychopomps have sparkmerged with enframed mechs before?”

“None,” Prowl admitted, “that I’m aware of. How do you feel?”

Jazz grinned broadly. “Fan-fraggin-tastic,” he pronounced, and pulled Prowl down to kiss him again.


	7. Epilogue 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Centauri gets a long-awaited clue.

“Uh - hey.”

Jazz glanced up from his latest goodie display and gave the shuttle lingering in the doorway a brilliant grin. “Tauri, hey! C’mon in, don’t mind the bell. What can I getcha?”

Centauri shuffled his pedes about it, but eventually more than just his helm made it into the shop - he couldn’t look more awkward and uncomfortable if he tried, though at least the bell didn’t make him startle enough to turn and run again.

“So, uh, is your boyfriend around?” he asked eventually, although given how his optics kept darting around the shop Jazz was pretty sure Centauri had worked out for himself that Prowl _wasn’t_ there. Not that it made him twitch any less; just the opposite.

“Sorry,nope; he’s workin’ right now.” Jazz tilted his helm, gave Centauri a cheery, helpful sort of smile - one that he’d perfected vorns before the shuttle had even been sparked, but never mind that. “Anythin’ I can help with?”

“...uh.” Centauri screwed his expression into something very much like Rodimus’ when confronted with unavoidable paperwork, then blurted, “So I wanted to ask Prowl about the whole seeing dead people thing but it really, really creeps me out still and I don’t even know what to ask or if it’ll do any good and what I really want is to _stop_ seeing dead people, not get better at it!”

“...woah. Okay. C’mon, kiddo, come ‘round the counter an’ take a load off.” 

The Earthism clearly meant nothing to Centauri, but he wobbled around the end of the counter nonetheless and flopped down onto a stool Jazz tugged out from his workroom; it creaked under his weight but held, and Centauri brightened slightly when Jazz offered him a galaxy spiral. 

“So, do you see dead people too, or is it just Prowl?” he asked around the goodie. “I mean, besides Starscream. He doesn’t count, everyone can see him.”

Jazz snickered. “Uh, so far it’s just Prowl. In theory I could see wandering sparks now, but they haven’t been wandering anywhere near me recently, so I haven’t had a chance to test that.”

Tauri’s expression crinkled in confusion. “Huh?”

“Long story.” Jazz waved the issue away. “So you’ve been seein’ things your whole life?”

“Just about.” Tauri shrugged uncomfortably. “I didn’t know they were _real -_ I mean, I thought I was just messed up in the processor. I mean, who do you ask about stuff like that?”

Jazz nodded. “Must’ve been rough. Especially with the political landscape the way it was.”

“I was _trying_ not to bring that up. I have _some_ tact, no matter what Lesti says.” Tauri was smiling a little, though, his optics brighter and his movements a little more animated. “Lesti said to tell you hi, by the way.”

“Is he okay?” Jazz asked, because a little bit of Ratchet had rubbed off on him after all. “No lingering aftereffects?”

Tauri grunted in amusement. “No one can be that big of a ham during dance practice and not be okay.”

Jazz couldn’t help snickering, much as the confirmation eased his spark. “And him and Lune~?” he asked with a sing-song grin, because above all things Jazz was and always would be an incurable gossip. He laughed out loud when Centauri pulled another face - _typical youngling!_

“I wouldn’t even notice if Pol hadn’t gone all goopy,” he grumbled. “Eesh. I hadn’t noticed anything _before._ Lesti isn’t supposed to be all - all squishy, it’s gross.”

“How old even are ya, kiddo?” Jazz hooted, leaning back against the counter before he fell over, and Centauri pulled _another_ face.

“Old enough! I heard about the Ark launching! ...just, uh, after it happened.” He bristled at Jazz’s suddenly incredulous expression. “Hey! I came online in a hole in the ground, all right? Not my fault.”

“Say whatnow?” Jazz said softly, laughter vanishing. “I ain’t gonna pry, but that don’t sound too good.”

Centauri hunched his shoulders, stiff wings unable to pull in around him but looking very much like he wished they could. “Yeah, well, my creators were a couple of weirdo archivists. They got convinced they were the only ones who could properly store all the data they could get their hands on, right? But they were kind of old and past it, so they built me. And don’t ask if I was a Sigma spark. I dunno exactly where home-sweet-hole was, I didn’t get to go outside. Pretty much just a glorified data storage unit, me. ...and the times I did try sticking my pretty little helm out the door when they were recharging or not paying attention, there were-”

He stopped, shuddering, and Jazz completed the thought for him. “Lemme guess - wandering sparks all torn up after a battle.”

“...yeah,” came a very small reply.

“...Primus.” Jazz leaned back. “This seer business is less comfortable than I thought. I was thinkin’ it was all settin’ up booths on the Trek of the Awoken.”

“You have no idea.” Tauri’s voice was a tired laugh, one Jazz recognized: the voice of a mech who’s seen far too many battlefields. “But you know, you saw the real thing. So maybe it’ll be easier for you.”

Jazz shuddered faintly, and picked up two more galaxy spirals and offered one to Tauri. “Doesn’t ever get easier, kid,” he said when Tauri accepted. “The things I’ve seen are gonna haunt me for the rest of my existence. ...no pun intended,” he added with a grin he didn’t feel.

Tauri smiled gamely. “So… you get it.”

“Some, yeah.”

Tauri sighed slowly, working the remains of his galaxy spiral in his cheek. “How do you deal with it?” he asked. “How do you make it stop rattling around in your processor? I couldn’t sleep for like four cycles last time I saw - saw a thing,” he amended quickly.

_Primus, these younglings,_ Jazz thought, suddenly feeling as old as Kup. “Hugs help,” he offered, holding an arm out.

Tauri snorted, but he scooted his stool over and let the smaller car-alt snuggle him close.

“Wanna help out with the goodies til Prowl gets back?” Jazz offered idly; it wasn’t a casual invitation, but Tauri was glad enough to go along with the distraction.

*

By the time Prowl got back to the Best Little Goodie Shop, Centauri was up to his elbows in shavings, glitter, powdered additives of every colour and had failed spectacularly to make anything all that edible, but he was laughing so hard he couldn’t stand up.

“Is it - is it like - That’s not supposed to-!”

“It’s really not!” Jazz cackled, throwing up his hands at the explosion of colour, then lit up like a sunrise as Prowl chuckled in the doorway. “Babe!”

“What in the world are you up to?” Prowl smiled fondly, bracing himself to catch Jazz’s flying leap and only just managing it in time. Jazz didn’t bother answering at first, wrapping around his bondmate for a kiss instead.

“Mmh, missed ya,” he breathed, and grinned as Prowl shivered.

“I missed you too, but it looks as though you’ve managed to entertain yourself,” Prowl replied dryly, casting an optic over the mess and nodding casually to Centauri - who, admittedly, had choked on his laughter and was bracing himself against the counter.

“Uh. Hi.”

“Hello. ...I hate to say it, Centauri, but I suggest you don’t give up being a star _quite_ yet.”

Centauri’s jaw dropped, then the dry tone registered and he puffed up automatically. “Hey! I totally made a - thing. It’s a- ...thing.”

“‘S a mess,” Jazz cackled, “but we had fun, right? An’ you’re just in time to try some!”

“...er.”

Jazz managed to coax a spoonful of Tauri’s ...thing into Prowl’s mouth, giggling all the while, which didn’t do wonders for Prowl’s nerves. Prowl smiled, gave Tauri a nod, and as soon as Tauri’s back was turned spat the glob of Not A Goodie At All into a convenient bin.

He wasn’t sure he could even swallow it. There was nowhere for it to go.

“So? How’d it go, anything interesting?” Jazz asked, finding out a canister for Tauri to take his creation home. “Roddy hasn’t tossed Starscream into the Furrows himself, has he?”

“Not so far,” Prowl admitted, not failing to noticed how Tauri’s near wing twitched. “But there was… another development.”

Jazz tilted his head, shamelessly curious. “Oh yeah? What?”

“Without infringing on anyone’s privacy,” Prowl said gravely, aware of Tauri’s attention, “it appears that I will have to start teaching classes on the finer points of wandering-spark divination. My fellow psychopomps, lost during the war, have begun to reincarnate.”

“...what?” blurted Jazz and Tauri in unison.

“The Key to Vector Sigma may have been lost in the Iacon bombardments, but the pathways between the Well and the living world are easier to travel if they are all you know.” Prowl found himself knotting his fingers, made himself fold them together instead. This was hard enough. “It seems that some of us - not all, not yet - tried to do as I did when my frame was destroyed and slingshot around the Well’s pull, but that is...difficult. There are some younglings of varying ages beginning to come forward with stories of seeing wandering sparks, and the trust that they will be taken seriously.”

Tauri reset - just about every system he had, hearing that, and who could blame him. He remembered dark, enclosing tunnels, impatience, the sure and certain knowledge that he had not been put on Cybertron to sort and download ancient records but not all that sure what his real calling was...and the sickening panic but not actual _surprise_ of his first sight of a shade stumbling along the tunnels, plating rent and torn and looking so lost.

“Oh frag me,” he choked out, then his legs wobbled and gave way. Jazz yelped, automatically dove under one arm to prop Tauri up, and snorted at himself when all he managed was to prop up one arm as the much bigger shuttle sat down hard. Prowl hadn’t made a dive for the other mech but he came closer now, standing close but not too close with a look of - Tauri wasn’t even sure what that look meant, sad and kind and maybe a tiny bit hopeful too.

“Tauri?” he said softly, and Centauri wanted to purge everything he’d ever eaten from his systems and hide.

“I think - oh frag. Oh frag _me._ Just - gimme a click here.”

“Of course,” Prowl murmured, and - with his uncanny optics always on Tauri’s face - tucked himself against Tauri’s other side. That helped, as freaky-weird as it was, and after a while the little workroom stopped lurching so hard.

“I don’t remember anything,” Tauri found himself saying, blurting really. “I _don’t_. Shouldn’t I?”

“Not necessarily,” Prowl soothed. “Coming back into a frame is traumatic enough when you are expecting it, and if it is true for you I can only imagine it was a hurried thing at best. ...it may not be true, you know. I am not about to force an explanation on you that doesn’t fit.”

Tauri tilted his helm, ducked down to get a better look; Prowl lifted his head serenely enough, but there was something in his face that Tauri didn’t like much.

“You think it is true, don’t you. ...is that why you said you’d help me? Because you thought I was somebody you used to know?”

“I would have helped you regardless,” Prowl said in a tone that brooked absolutely no argument at all. “But I must confess, there is something...familiar, about your spark. I would have guessed you were an old spark even without knowing there are others coming forward. This doesn’t make you any less _Centauri_ ; just that you have an extra layer that others don’t.”

“That...I gotta say, that kind of helps. _Kind of._ ”

“Sometimes ‘kind of’ is all you get,” Jazz muttered, and while it meant nothing to Prowl, it seemed to strike a chord with Centauri. Prowl couldn’t help but wonder just what they had been talking about before he had arrived.

*

“You’re looking cheerful today, Centauri.”

Tauri glanced up with a grin, letting the display of Jazz’s goodies speak for itself. “”You’re lookin’ especially shiny today, Lesti.”

“Why, thank you.” Celesti preened, as urbane and self-satisfied as he’d ever been. Sometimes his attitude drove Centauri crazy; tonight he was overjoyed to see it. “I hear we’re hosting some special guests tonight, I could hardly be less than my shiniest.”

“Heh. No arguments there.” Centauri glanced toward the entryway. “It’s gonna be a good evening,” he pronounced determinedly.

“Hmm? Any reason in particular?”

Centauri shrugged. “Not really. I just have this feeling.”

Their chronometers, synched to La Lune’s, clicked over to Opening Time; music floated through the reception room as the doors unlocked. “Game face,” Centauri muttered, and put on a bright grin of welcome as the first of the evening’s guests came in.

“Hey, mechs, welcome to Sunset House! C’mon in, try a goodie…”

Between Celesti’s easy manners and Centauri’s enthusiasm, they welcomed their guests and got them situated and relaxed, chatting and flirting with all of them in equal measures. Only Celesti, who knew Centauri a bit better than even their oldest regulars, noticed Centauri glancing at the doorway more often than he needed to.

“They’ll be here,” he murmured as he passed his fellow star.

“They’d better be here soon,” Centauri muttered back. “Pol’s about to perform.”

The music changed, making anticipation ripple through the room, and a last pair of stragglers entered and paused in the entryway to read the rules, the smaller holding his larger companion’s hand. Only Centauri saw their third companion, his form glowing faintly gold.

“Finally,” he burst out, though he managed to keep it under his breath. Leaving Celesti to work the crowd, he bounded over to greet them. “Hey! ‘Bout time, I saved you a table.”

“Hey, Tauri,” Jazz grinned as Prowl gave him a nod. “Sorry we’re late, we had trouble prying our boy out from behind his desk.”

‘Our boy’ scoffed, rolling his optics. “Oh sure, blame it on me.”

Jazz cackled. “Centauri, may I present the mech most in need of a night of goofing off with friends in all of Iacon: Rodimus Prime.”


	8. Epilogue 2: A Long-Awaited Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Behold, it is Jazz, High Priest of - wait. What?

_Four years later_

The Best Little Goodie Shop had done a roaring trade on the eve of the Trek of the Awoken - it seemed like everyone in Iacon just had to have a stack of goodies for their own little shrines or to take to the large one that had been set up on the main thoroughfare, but for the duration of the Trek itself Jazz had closed his doors. He fully intended on going out to enjoy the party himself, but first...he was expecting visitors. Prowl had gone out to make sure the few remaining natural seers and his small band of reincarnated psychopomps were coping with demand, as well as to let the citizenry of Cybertron see him walking about on the Treks - he’d be home later with Bluestreak and the Lambo twins, probably with Ricochet come visiting too. The little apartment over the shop had its own plate piled high with spiral galaxies, amongst other things; Jazz set some music playing for a proper party atmosphere, then settled in to wait with butterflies rampaging around in his tanks. 

When the first softly-glowing bobble of light appeared, Jazz just about leaped on the table in the split-second before he snatched back his self-control. 

“Mech!” he said cheerily, squinting at the pearly glow. “Hey, come in, take a load off. Want a goodie?”

_“You always did know just what to say,”_ came a familiar voice worn croaky and tired, and Jazz whooped as Ratchet’s familiar outline hazed into view around the glowing spark.

“Doc! Slag, it’s good to see you. -hey, I can see you without help. Isn’t that wild?” Jazz beamed as Ratchet settled in one of the chairs around the table. “Some kinda Unicron allergy thing. ‘Bee and Roddy have it too. Or maybe it’s the Matrix in Roddy’s case, still not too sure about that.”

_”That makes no sense and I love you for it,”_ Ratchet deadpanned, and cackled when Jazz made ‘awww’ noises. _”Goodie-maker Jazz! Slag, civilian Jazz. Never thought I’d see the day. How’s business?”_

“Business is truckin’ along,” Jazz grinned. “I’ve even got a regular order goin’ out to Sunset House - you remember Sunset House, right?”

_”Sure, I might remember the place.”_ Ratchet gave Jazz a shrewd look. _”You’re not sellin’ it to them at cost, are you? I know you, mech.”_

“Why, _why_ does no one have any faith in my ability to run a business?”

_”Because you’re a great big softie, that’s why.”_

“Oh, look who’s talkin’,” Jazz protested, waggling a finger at Ratchet’s grinning face. “I remember the time you let the Protectobots make a blanket fort in the medbay-”

_”Excuse me, that was a medical necessity!”_ But Ratchet was laughing, as bright and warm as he’d ever been in life. _”Seriously, I’m proud of you, Jazz. We all are.”_

_“Slaggin’ right,”_ came another voice, and Jazz whipped around to grin at Ironhide. _“Good ta see ya, mech.”_

“You too!” Jazz laughed, couldn’t help it, didn’t want to help it. He threw an arm around Ironhide’s shoulders as far as he could reach, delighted at the mech’s doubletake - frag, he’d had plenty of practise at hugging insubstantial people by now - and towed him over to Ratchet to hug him too. “Frag, now it’s a party.”

_“So that’s the plan,”_ Ratchet chuckled, but didn’t look at all like he wanted to complain. _“Everyone piling in here?”_

“Pretty much,” Jazz said cheerily. “Prowler’s workin’, but you prob’ly saw him already.” The other two Autobots were nodding even before he’d finished speaking, Ratchet amused and Ironhide openly pleased with what he’d seen.

_“Proud a’ him, too,”_ he rumbled. _“Saw him helpin’ out a lil’ seer with a tricky customer ‘fore he said hi. He’s gonna send anyone else over when they’re done.”_

“Sure thing,” Jazz said, grinning from audial to audial. “So, in the meantime, who wants a spiral galaxy?”

The three of them settled in; the two disenframed mechs couldn’t nibble the goodies like Jazz was, but hovering over them was enough to impart some strength and refreshment from them. It was a long Trek to see their cohort-mate, but it was worth it. Jazz got them caught up on all the good gossip - the story of how Prowl had kicked Starscream’s aft and accidentally almost started a religion had them whooping with mirth, and Jazz had a feeling he wouldn’t be living down “High Priest of Prowl” for the next few centuries. Then he told them all about what Starscream had done next, and “High Priest of Prowl” turned into “High Priest of Hockey Puck.”

By the time Prowl got back, Wheeljack, Windcharger and Brawn had also arrived at the scene and were leading some kind of nigh-hysterical mock ceremony in honour of the High Priest of Hockey Puck, with Ironhide and Ratchet collapsed in their chairs - literally, in both cases.

“What in the world,” Prowl murmured, a smile already warming his voice; behind him, Bluestreak stood on the tips of his pedes to see and let out a high-pitched squeak.

_“Ratchet!”_

The disenframed medic had just enough time to make an attempt at sitting up through his cackles before Bluestreak threw himself across the room, tripped over the chair and thumped into the wall, and Blue would be the first to say that he _did not care_ because Ratchet was right there to alternate between alarm, worry and scolding. The Twins were frozen in the doorway, Sideswipe having lunged to grab Sunstreaker’s arm and then been unable to move again - Sunstreaker’s optics were blazing too-bright and laser focussed, flicking from one shade to another. Ironhide glanced between them and the huddle of Bluestreak-and-Ratchet then shoved up onto his pedes, ambling over to the twins himself as Prowl drifted over to find out why Jazz was on the table.

_“Hey there, brats,”_ he said a little hoarsely. _“Y’better be lookin’ out fer each other.”_

Sideswipe swallowed hard, static still a lump in his vocaliser even as he tried for a wobbly smile. “Sure thing, ‘Hide.”

_”That’s what I like to hear.”_ A gentle ruffle, which Sideswipe could only experience as a tingle - Prowl’s presence made the ghosts visible to the ‘normal’ mechs, but touch was more difficult to replicate. _”Good to see you. You’re lookin’ shiny.”_

At that Sideswipe did manage a real smile. “Thanks. We’re both keeping busy, but there’s a lot more time for self-maintenance nowadays.”

“There’s always time for self-maintenance if you make it a priority,” Sunstreaker put in loftily.

“Whatever you say, washrack hog.” Sideswipe ducked a half-sparked swipe from his twin, grinning. “Hey, tell ‘Hide what you’ve been working on. He’ll love it.”

“Siiides,” Sunstreaker growled, squirming where he stood, but it was too late: he had the ghosts’ attention.

_“You’re working on something?”_ Wheeljack asked, all eagerness and delight. _”Tell, tell!”_

_“Please?”_ Windcharger added.

“It’s still in the planning stages.” Sunstreaker shot a glower at his brother. “I don’t even have final permission yet, so there’s nothing to tell.”

Bluestreak, having suffered no ill effects from his header into the wall, reached out from Ratchet’s careful embrace to take his hand. “But you know they’ll say yes,” he protested, “and everyone’ll really love that you’re planning it. I’m not trying to pressure you, I promise, just I’m so proud of you and so’s Sides and Jazz and Prowl and they will be too!”

Sunstreaker sighed through his vents. “Slag, Blue, you gotta wrap me around your little finger when you say stuff like that.” Bluestreak wriggled bashfully. “Okay, so I found a few pictures of the Ark crew when we were going through some old stuff-”

“-You wouldn’t believe how many action figures we’ve got, they’re probably worth thousands on eBay,” Sideswipe grinned.

“Shush, you mercenary,” Jazz grinned, knowing his Take-Me-Seriously stat was in the negative numbers thanks to what Windcharger had demanded he put on his head. “The _artiste_ is revealing his genius.”

“Helpful Jazz is not helping,” Sunstreaker pointed out. “So I got a sort of idea that someone should do a mural.”

“And since Sunny’s the only one out of any of us who can draw a straight line…”

_”That’s not true, Sludge can draw.”_

_“I dunno if his attention span would stretch far enough for a mural, though.”_

Sunstreaker rolled his optics. “Long story short, there’s a stretch of wall just outside Autobot Headquarters I wanna paint but I’m still waiting on a few signatures. Can I have a slagging goodie now?”

“You can have all the goodies you like,” Prowl said softly; Bluestreak hugged Sunstreaker tight, beaming, then shifted to hug Prowl again too, just a little shyly. It had been hard on all of them when Prowl had asked Jazz to get in touch with Bluestreak and the twins - they had asked for, and received, a long stretch of leave from Rodimus to go travelling, and Prowl had dithered (Jazz’s choice of words) over whether to comm them or not. Bluestreak had abstained from asking for messages on both Treks on Earth for a reason, but Jazz had poked Prowl - repeatedly - and offered to send a message himself to soften the shock of Prowl being back. 

It hadn’t been all that easy to invite the remaining enframed Autobots in general, come to that. The Protectobots were still stationed on Earth, though the Aerialbots were due back at any moment. The Dinobots, fortunately or unfortunately, came thundering up the stairs just after Sunstreaker had hidden behind another galaxy spiral and threw themselves as one mech into an enthusiastic puppy-pile on top of Wheeljack and Ratchet, the shades laughing all the way.

Prowl had also promised to escort any sparks who wished to make the journey to Earth, again with Jazz sending messages on their behalf beforehand, so they could visit Red Alert, Inferno and the Earth-based team with the benefit of Prowl’s making them visible and audible. 

“Best party ever,” Jazz grinned as he approached his partner, and Prowl smiled.

“It will be when Optimus arrives, but he said something about passing a message on to Rodimus. In the meantime,” he added, drawing Jazz in for a kiss, “this is a celebration. Turn the music up, love.”


End file.
